Theresa May: I thank the right hon. and learned Lady for giving us the future business and for her promise that statements will be made to the House first.
	Two days ago, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs put out a press release on the European Union's new foot and mouth movement restrictions for livestock. It allows some farmers to export again, but it means greater restrictions for some farmers in the south-east, yet there was no statement to Parliament on the issue, written or oral. May we have a statement from the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs on the new foot and mouth restrictions?
	In trying to avoid the West Lothian question, the Prime Minister announced his big idea, Regional Select Committees. Yet when the Leader of the House was asked about Regional Select Committees two weeks ago, she pointedly talked about regional accountability and refused to endorse them. Perhaps they are another Brown policy that is falling apart. Will the Leader of the House make a statement on the Government's policy on Regional Select Committees?
	The Roman Catholic bishop to the military says that the Government have a duty to our armed forces in death and in injury, and must do the very best for their anxious and grieving families. Sadly, that is not happening. When the right hon. and learned Lady was Minister for justice, she said that the backlog of 110 military inquests was unacceptable and promised that it would be sorted out. In July, when there was a backlog of 109, she said that
	"we cannot have delays to inquests."—[ Official Report, 12 July 2007; Vol. 462, c. 1611.]
	This month the Ministry of Justice confirmed that the backlog is now 116 cases. May we have a statement from the Secretary of State for Justice on this important matter?
	On Tuesday, the Governor of the Bank of England said that the Northern Rock crisis could have been prevented, had the Chancellor acted earlier. After the "is he, isn't he" flip-flopping on capital gains tax, and the pilfered pre-Budget report, there are now serious questions about the Chancellor's ability to do the job. May we have a debate in Government time on the Chancellor's competence?
	May we also have a debate on honesty in advertising? Last week, the Prime Minister's spin doctors contacted several schools to tell them that he was going to praise them in his keynote education speech. But, guess what, he did not mention a single one of them. First he used BNP slogans promising policies that are illegal, then we had double-counted troop withdrawals, and now he is playing politics with schoolchildren. A debate would allow the Prime Minister to apologise to the people he is taking for a ride.
	The Prime Minister wants to stop Opposition parties campaigning in his marginal seats by fixing the rules on party funding. Of course, he will not scrap the £10,000 communications allowance that Labour MPs voted for themselves—[Hon. Members: "And you!"] We voted against it. Nor will he limit the millions of pounds poured into Labour's coffers by the trade unions, which, in turn, get taxpayers' money and changes in the law. May we have a debate in Government time on the union modernisation fund, the Warwick agreement and all the others ways in which Labour repays its union donors?
	Last weekend, the Justice Secretary said that the Labour party was "despondent" and that it needed a good week to
	"get out of this rut",
	But it is still in the rut. This week, we have had indecision, incompetence and weakness. But is that not the truth of this Prime Minister—all spin and no vision?

Harriet Harman: I thank the hon. Gentleman for his comments about my 25 years in the House. It has been an honour and privilege to be a Member of the House for 25 years, and in particular to represent the constituency of Camberwell and Peckham for those years.
	The hon. Gentleman asked how many people had responded to the publication of our draft legislative programme. The first question for us to ask is whether the Government should work behind the scenes on their draft legislative programme or publish it earlier. We have published it earlier, and that in its own right is an important move towards transparency. We have made something open that was previously kept behind closed doors. It is the first time that we have done that, and the systems for giving information to people about the draft legislative programme, and for inviting people to comment for the first time on something that they have never seen before, are in their infancy. That is why not many people commented, but regional Ministers consulted in all regions. Local authority leaders were also consulted in all regions, and many attended the consultation meetings. Businesses responded to the regional consultations, as did voluntary sector leaders.
	I think that we were right to publish our draft legislative programme, and we will do better next year by publishing it earlier. Hon. Members should decide whether it is a good idea to publish it, but I think it is. There is no justification for taking it back behind closed doors. I shall publish a report in due course, when we have received the results of the Modernisation Committee's reflections, and it will state the number of people who did and did not respond.
	As the hon. Gentleman will know, the marine Bill was included in the Queen's Speech. It will be published in draft, and I expect widespread consultation on it. The hon. Gentleman himself acknowledged how important it was to publish the climate change Bill in draft first so that there could be proper pre-legislative scrutiny.
	The hon. Gentleman asked about regional accountability. We want to ensure that it is effective and legitimate—legitimate as seen from Westminster, and as seen from the region. The hon. Gentleman will know that the Modernisation Committee is looking into that, and we will present proposals to the House. There will be no perfect constitutional answer, but I am sure that we can do more to strengthen regional accountability.
	I shall draw the hon. Gentleman's comments on the Ministry of Justice's review of election systems to the attention of the Secretary of State, who may be able to write to him and give him an idea of timing. He asked about the important forthcoming Commonwealth conference: I remind him that there will be a debate on the Department for International Development next Monday, when, no doubt, he will be able to raise some of the issues with the Secretary of State.

Harriet Harman: That is the second time that that important point has been made. I will bring it to the attention of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for International Development.
	Let me correct my answer to the hon. Member for Worthing, West (Peter Bottomley): the response should, perhaps, have been not that I will reflect but, "They are trying to nick our ideas."

Harriet Harman: The Home Secretary has made a number of comments in this House and elsewhere about the work of the Metropolitan Commissioner, which she and the Government strongly support. I remind the right hon. Gentleman that, unlike him, I am a Member of Parliament representing a London constituency. I have discussed this issue with my constituents, and, on the basis of an unscientific opinion survey, I would say that they are very supportive of the work that the Metropolitan Commissioner has been leading in the Metropolitan police. Despite believing that it was absolutely tragic that this innocent young man lost his life, they do not want the Commissioner to resign, but to get on with his job of protecting Londoners. The right hon. Gentleman will know that the Independent Police Complaints Commission is publishing its report this morning, and that this issue was debated yesterday.

Tony Baldry: Will the Leader of the House provide an opportunity for an early debate on the National Audit Office report, which was published today and is in the Vote Office, on how the Government managed to squander £33 million on an asylum centre in Bicester that was never built, where a brick was not laid and a sod was not turned? Is it not scandalous that, had it not been for my asking the NAO to undertake this report, none of this would ever have come out, and that no Minister has offered today to apologise? Like everything else with this Government when they squander such a sum, I suspect that no Minister will apologise. They have been promising Bicester a new community hospital for nearly a decade, and £33 million could have built, staffed and run such a hospital for many decades to come. Will the Leader of the House apologise on behalf of the Government for the monstrous waste of money on this project?

Harriet Harman: The hon. Gentleman will know that the health and social care Bill included in this Queen's Speech will make further progress on improving provision for death certification. I still hope that time will be found for the important reforms contained in the draft Coroners Bill, which has already been considered by this House through the relevant Select Committee, if we can make progress on the other aspects of the legislative programme and so bring the Coroners Bill before the House.

Hazel Blears: It is a privilege to open this section of the debate on the Gracious Speech. I wish to start by paying tribute to the four firefighters who lost their lives in Warwickshire last weekend: John Averis, Ian Reid, Ashley Stevens and Darren Yates-Badley. Their loss is a reminder of the commitment and courage that our dedicated emergency services show every day, be they firefighters, ambulance crews, police officers, community support officers or the volunteers of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution. This was the worst loss of life for the fire and rescue service in a single incident for 35 years. It has had a huge impact on a small community, and I know that it is felt very deeply by their colleagues everywhere. Our condolences go to all their friends and families.
	I am proud to be Communities Secretary at a time when, as the Government's programme has made clear, we are poised to make a significant shift in the way that the business of government is carried out. We want more power to be given to Parliament and to the people. Devolution will be brought to the countries, councils, communities and citizens. What a contrast that will be with the record in government of the Opposition, who should be judged by their deeds and not their words. In 18 years, they hoovered up powers to the centre, from schools, colleges, local councils and the NHS. They abolished London-wide government, and starved councils of cash.
	Yes, as a councillor in the Tory years, I remember how the Conservative Government cut budgets every year. Let's hope that we never go back to that. It beggars belief that the Leader of the Opposition is in Manchester today to launch a Conservative co-operative movement. Conservatism and co-operation have as much in common as chalk and cheese.
	As ever, the Opposition's rhetoric about localism is merely a fig leaf for their desire to cut public spending, shrink the state and let the free market take over. The Conservatives believe, not in co-operation, but in competition, of the kind that lets a few swim while the many sink. That is what we saw in the 1980s and 1990s, in my city and in communities across the country. By their deeds shall we know them.
	Today, thanks to 10 years of investment and the commitment of local leaders, over three quarters of councils now have three or four stars from the Audit Commission.

Philip Davies: The Government try to portray the 3 million homes that they are building before 2020 as being simply to make sure that young people can get on the housing ladder. Will she confirm that, by the Government's own admission, of the 3 million houses that they say will be built more than 1 million are for future immigration? Is that why, after his disastrous slogan of "British jobs for British workers", the Prime Minister has not come up with a slogan of "British houses for British families"?

Hazel Blears: Many of the new homes that will be built will be for families; they will be for first-time buyers. But they will also be for older people, who increasingly are living alone. The hon. Gentleman has to recognise that this is a demographic problem and not simply seek to scapegoat immigrants.
	This is a Government on the side of aspiration for the many, not the few. The Prime Minister has made it clear that we will build 3 million new homes by 2020. I want to pay tribute to the work of my right hon. Friend the Minister for Housing. She is taking the programme forward with passion and vigour. The Conservative party, by opposing our plans to build more homes, is betraying the aspirations of everyone who wants to own their own home but is struggling to get on the ladder.
	The Government will bring forward a housing and regeneration Bill to create a new homes and communities agency. The agency will be vital to delivering our Government's housing ambitions, working with local authorities and the private sector to promote regeneration and build new social and affordable housing.

Hazel Blears: My hon. Friend makes an extremely good point. He will know that we have been trying to ensure that we use the data about super-output areas so that we really do drill down into those pockets of deprivation in our policies right across the board, but also in housing policy. It is a key issue. Sometimes these matters are felt even more keenly where there are pockets of deprivation within an area that is affluent overall.

Hazel Blears: I shall not give way to the hon. Gentleman again. I shall give way to his colleague, the hon. Member for East Surrey.

Hazel Blears: Absolutely. My hon. Friend makes a very important point. Quality as well as quantity is fundamental, and that brings me to my next point. I am talking about not the one-size-fits-all monolithic estates of the past, but mixed communities, supported by excellent schools, transport and hospitals; decent design, which helps defeat crime, provides space for young and old, with green spaces and safe places to come together as friends and neighbours; green homes, where the needs of the environment are balanced with the needs of families; and not the quick-fix solutions that blighted too much of the post-war building programme, but well designed houses that people are proud to call home.
	I visited Nottingham yesterday to see the innovative proposals for new eco-homes in the Meadows area of the city. I saw real enthusiasm, real vision and, crucially, genuine support from the local community for the new development. It is a tragedy that the Tories oppose such initiatives, because they are the prisoners of the nimbyism of Opposition Members.

Eric Pickles: Black hole? Is that from the Government who have just revised borrowing requirements by £11.6 billion? I will take no lectures from the Government. They are the Government of the dodgy figures on housing, dodgy figures on the homeless and an inability to get round to building. We do not want to hear from the right hon. Lady any more on those matters.
	Let us talk about the quango. The new homes and communities agency, which is better known as the greenfield housing development agency, will be established by merging English Partnerships with the Housing Corporation. In typical Labour fashion, two quangos will be merged to produce—well, two quangos, for alongside the Greenfield housing development agency, the office for tenants and social landlords will be created.
	Only this Government would demand 3 million new houses and simultaneously be demolishing homes against people's will. That act of supreme vandalism, which is called the pathfinder scheme, is another failure. It was much trumpeted, full of high expectations, with no delivery. Across the country terraced houses are being bulldozed against the wishes of local people and local communities, and the Government refuse to listen. Bureaucrats in Whitehall are forcing the demolition of family homes across England. Town halls that fail to meet the arbitrary targets for bulldozing or seizing homes will face the threat of savage cuts to their funding.
	Let me give an example that the Secretary of State might well recognise. In Salford, town hall bosses have rejected pleas for the local community to renovate homes in Seedley under the pathfinder scheme. They opted to demolish, on the grounds that the renovation plans lacked the "transformational" qualities needed to obtain Government funding. Why do the Government think that the only way to build new houses is to ride roughshod over the communities that they want to build in?

Hilary Armstrong: It is some time since I have addressed the House from the Back Benches—about 18 and a half years, I think—but I am delighted to be speaking today and to welcome the Gracious Address. I was very pleased to hear what my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State had to say. I was extremely disappointed, however, in the contribution of the hon. Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Mr. Pickles), whom I knew well in local government. I remember him when he was a local government leader. He did not talk about the north at all today, and I do not think that he would dare go anywhere near it now. They kicked him out of Bradford, and now we know why. I am really disappointed that he gave us not an ounce of an idea of what he would seek to do in housing, local government or anything else. We know nothing about Tory policies—because, I suspect, there simply are no Tory policies.
	Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak with some trepidation, because I am not going to speak only on today's topic. I shall ask for your indulgence, and use this debate on the Queen's Speech to talk about some of the issues that keep me going, get me up in the morning and convince me that this Government can do even more to change the opportunities of the people in communities such as mine, who for years were led to believe that they had nothing to contribute, and told that the Government did not expect them to play any part in the world. The devastation of communities such as mine during the Tory years is still deep in people's psyche; it is there for all to see. The difference that has been made over the past 10 years is remarkable, but there is still more to do.
	The real strength of the Queen's Speech was the commitment to aspiration. Many people in the north-east have simply never believed that they were able to take part in the advantages of our modern society. If there is one thing that we need to do in the north-east, it is to turn around the aspirations of the younger generation, and of their parents, so that that generation can really become the drivers of change and opportunity. Much of what was in the Queen's Speech, and in the public service agreements in the Budget statement last month, showed how the Government have learned from their time in office that there needs to be a much clearer focus and much more effective cross-cutting interdepartmental work.
	I spent the last year of my time in government trying to ensure that we joined up different polices and, as my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said, shaped places more effectively, so that people living in them could achieve their very best and turn their lives around. I want us to do that by tackling the huge challenges, such as child poverty, which still exist in the north-east. I am pleased to be involved with people in the region in turning child poverty round within the next generation. As a result of the legacy in the region, it has the highest number of children who do not get the opportunities that they should have.
	I disagree with the main plank of what the Tories have said. They try to maintain that society is broken. Society is not broken. Far too many people within our society and communities are not getting the opportunities that they need, and do not have real access to what would turn those opportunities around. However, many people have opportunities today and are achieving—they have jobs, and so on—because of what has been going on in this Government, and they want to be part of ensuring that things are even better for the next generation.
	I admit that in my last year in government I became obsessed with early intervention. The Government have done remarkable things for early years opportunities. We have built up an infrastructure of children's centres around the country, and there is a recognition that early years education and opportunity make a difference to children's lives. Sometimes, however, we were not sufficiently systematic to ensure that those got through to the children who needed them most. We opened the doors, and hoped that they would all come through. What happens is that those who recognise the opportunity storm through the doors and take it up, but some of those who are not too sure how to go about it, or who are worried about what life would be like in there, or whether they would be embarrassed because they did not have the same vocabulary, or whatever, as other people there, simply do not turn up.
	One of the programmes that we introduced is the family nurse partnership, and I was delighted when a couple of weeks ago the Government announced that they were giving a further £30 million to that. The programme is rolling out in 10 pilot areas around the country. The Leader of the Opposition does not know what he thinks about it yet. He called it a new programme of foetal ASBOs—antisocial behaviour orders—but others on his Front Bench welcomed it because they saw what it could do.
	I was delighted to meet Professor David Olds in my constituency the week before last when he came to see how the programme is being rolled out in Durham. It is making a huge difference. Nurses are meeting young women whom they say nobody else has picked up. Those young women have an early pregnancy, and may have mental health problems. They have certainly missed a lot of school, and their literacy and numeracy may not be what we would expect. Now, however, they have learned about what happens to a baby's brain as it develops in the foetus and are now enthusiastically deciding for themselves that it would be a good thing if they do not smoke or drink any more, because they know that that will enable their baby to grow better in the womb and to be born heavier and probably later.
	The programme's results are beginning to show real differences in local communities. We know, because the programme has been so well researched and evidenced internationally, that it produces enormous benefits for both parents and children. The amazing thing—this really interested the professor from Colorado—is that we are managing to get fathers involved, in a way that they have not managed to achieve as well in America.
	In America, for every $1 spent in the programme, the state, or the foundations, will have saved $5 by the time the child is 15. I am not saying that we will get such superb results in this country, but the programme will make a huge difference. The young women and the parents are beginning to get some self-respect—some knowledge and understanding of themselves and their responsibilities in terms of rearing their children. That is making a difference as those children are growing up. We know that we have to get to the most disadvantaged as early as we can and work with them in a positive way so that they can draw on their own resources and strengths and build on those.
	Our society is not broken. We have to engage with people in ways that allow and enable them to be the best that they can. I sometimes look at the Opposition and wonder where things went wrong—but I know that such programmes can be productive. I urge the Government to see how we can use our resources most effectively in all their programmes. We cannot do that just by pouring money in, but by building relationships, using the money effectively and ensuring that we make a difference in the lives of the people who were abandoned, rejected and absolutely neglected by the previous Administration. I look forward to working with my right hon. Friends to ensure that that is precisely the legacy that this Government give to the country—by building a new generation that can take the opportunities to develop their skills, and to develop the skills and opportunities in their communities, so that our country is at the forefront of how the world develops in the future.

Andrew Stunell: We share the Secretary of State's grief and concern at the loss of the firefighters' lives. I, and my party, want to be associated with the condolences that she extended. It is a stark reminder that however much we talk about such things in the House, it is often the people out there—the local service providers—who take the hits when trouble strikes.
	I welcome the Secretary of State to the Dispatch Box to defend her Government's record and to explain their intentions. The Department that she runs has a central role to play in key issues that this country faces. Planning and housing are clearly among those. The fact has not been mentioned yet, but more than 1.6 million families are on the council house waiting list. House prices have been rising and are now unreachable by many first-time buyers, especially in the south, but also in constituencies such as mine, in Greater Manchester. Repossessions are predicted to rise from 8,000 in 2004 to 30,000 this year and 45,000 next year. As we have heard from the intermittent references to the subject of the debate, there is an overheated housing market in the overcrowded south-east, and there are environmental problems that go with that.
	Less often mentioned has been the fact that more than half the carbon dioxide emitted in this country comes from buildings. The regulation and environmental control of buildings is also within the Secretary of State's remit. If we take the new projections of population growth seriously, it appears that many of the existing pressures will become more severe in the coming year.
	The Department has a central role in ensuring that local services are provided throughout the country in a timely and effective way. Last week's comprehensive spending review and pre-Budget statement made it clear that things will be very difficult for local government over the coming year, given a sharp reduction in the development of finances. The Minister for Local Government himself has said that there will be a tight settlement. We know that there will be ferocious pressures on the delivery of social care throughout the country, we know that the costs of the single-status agreement—which were raised earlier—are not funded properly, and we have heard rumours that another round of unitary authorities is being contemplated in Lancashire and Cumbria. It is a turbulent world in which the Secretary of State reigns and provides finance. The provision of finance, too, should have featured in the Queen's Speech, but it contained no proposals for reform of the local taxation system.
	This is not just a question of housing, planning and local services; we must also consider equality and social cohesion. The Secretary of State referred briefly to the report by the commission on social cohesion. I hope to hear later today that she has accepted its recommendations, and that she will place the results of her consideration in the Library.
	We were tantalised by the reference to action on citizenship in the Queen's Speech. The Secretary of State did not mention it explicitly, but her commission has produced recommendations which I consider to be of great sense, sensitivity and understanding. I hope that any action on citizenship that is taken will pay especial regard to what the commission has said, and as a first step will restore funds to local authorities to provide English lessons without the penalties that have been hinted at elsewhere.
	It is interesting to note that despite a great deal of talk beforehand, the single equalities Bill did not find its way into the Queen's Speech in draft or any other form—but we do have measures relating to housing, planning, local services, equality and social cohesion. How have the Government, and the Department in particular, responded to those crucial issues? Many of them require cross-departmental action—people getting out of the silos, joined-up government, and so forth—and that applies to no issue more than it does to climate change, "the greatest threat to mankind".
	What contribution does the Secretary of State intend to make during this Session to solving the problem of climate change? We are bound to say, "None, really." The Climate Change Bill is welcome, but it covers only carbon dioxide emissions, it does not set annual targets—it establishes instead a five-year target which is out of synchronisation with the general election sequence to which we are accustomed—and, at 60 per cent., its target is too low. It should also be noted that it does not include aviation or shipping. Nevertheless, any climate change Bill is better than no climate change Bill, just as any single equalities Bill would have been better than no single equalities Bill.
	I was fascinated by the Secretary of State's assurance that the Merton rule would be retained, and that, in her words, the Department wished to strengthen it and make it more flexible. I do not believe that it is possible to do both those things at the same time. Local authorities all over the country have already adopted the Merton rule or variants of it, and others wish to do so. Whatever the Secretary of State says in this place, her civil servants are still advising councils to hold back and to slow down, which cannot be right. I urge the Secretary of State to back up what is in the Climate Change Bill by letting local authorities and local democracy get on with the job that they are ready and willing to do in support of the Government's strategy.
	I cannot let pass the opportunity of mentioning what was said to the Secretary of State earlier about monitoring the effectiveness of environmental regulation of buildings. She said that a review was being carried out. I remind her that there was cross-party support for the Sustainable and Secure Buildings Act 2004, which I was happy to promote, but that I am still waiting for her and her Ministers to implement the provision allowing additional monitoring. She does not need new legislation in the Queen's Speech; she just needs to get on with it.
	We must also ask where the marine Bill is—but that is not the right hon. Lady's problem. The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, who is sitting next to her, knows very well that only two or three weeks ago, when he spoke at a meeting here, he gave a clear hint that the Bill would be ready and waiting for us in the Queen's Speech—but it is not.
	I return to the question of housing and planning. Ministers seem to think that with housing, there is a choice to be made between quality and quantity, but the Liberal Democrats reject that idea. We must have high-quality sustainable housing, and we must have more housing as well. The need is substantial, but what we are offered is too little affordable housing, too little social housing and too little sustainable housing. We need to see, in the housing Bill, measures that genuinely empower local communities to make their own decisions, and to provide public land for affordable housing through the use of community land trusts.
	Please will the Secretary of State give an undertaking that all new homes will be zero-energy buildings with zero carbon emissions by 2011, rather than by 2016, which is the Government's aspiration? Will she also present proposals to start the upgrading of existing buildings, especially the 70 per cent. of existing homes that will still be in use in 2050 and which, unless action is taken now, will still be emitting a ridiculously high level of carbon?

Andrew Stunell: I do not pretend to be an expert, nor do I want to offer an opinion about that crossing, which I know has serious problems, but I do know that the two local authorities concerned and the elected Mayor approved the project. There was a conflict at that point, and perhaps those local authorities were not representative of the views of their communities; the hon. Gentleman clearly believes that to be the case.
	I was about to talk about Victorian values, because we should look back to the era of the railway developments of the 19th century. More miles of railway were developed in 50 years then than miles of motorway were built in the last 50 years of the 20th century, and the Secretary of State had nothing at all to do with it. This House did, however; railway Bills cluttered up the House's time in that era.
	The Secretary of State is currently too often the arbiter of major infrastructure projects, and saying that he or she is democratically accountable to this House is only a fig-leaf. Frequently, the lengthy preliminaries of reports and inquiries serve only to validate a decision that has already been taken. We will examine closely what the Government are now proposing. It is one thing to streamline the process, but it is another thing to ignore the evidence completely and override the clear wishes of the local community.
	I put the following point to the Secretary of State when the White Paper was first presented to the House: if there is to be an independent commission, it is important for it to be genuinely independent, so that it can contradict the intention of the Secretary of State, and if it does so, the Secretary of State will leave it at that. If not, it will simply be another link in a lengthy chain of decision making, and will not improve the situation one bit.

Andrew Stunell: My hon. Friend tempts me into some very difficult territory. I will listen carefully to his further representations on that point.
	The problem with the Queen's Speech is not just what is in it, but what is not in it. Chief among those absences is the lack of a single equalities Bill. Discrimination law in this country is in a mess, and we need that Bill to protect people regardless of their race, disability, sexual orientation, religion or gender identity. It is a great pity, and I very much regret that such a Bill will not come forward in this parliamentary Session. I hope that behind the scenes, there will be some action to kick it forward promptly. However, if there is to be a delay, the Secretary of State could take advantage of that setback to consider including within that Bill the outlawing of discrimination on the ground of caste, as well. Some of us attended a conference in this place yesterday, hosted by the hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Rob Marris), at which we heard testimonies to the pervasive way in which this blatant discrimination has crept into British public services. This is a real and substantial issue, and it now falls to the Secretary of State, on behalf of the Government, to take it up.
	In the Queen's Speech the Government have flunked the housing question, blocked the planning issue, stumped local government and run away from equality. Neither they nor the Conservatives have any answers to the key issues of fair local taxation, local empowerment and Britain's housing crisis. The Liberal Democrats will, accordingly, vote against the Queen's Speech.

Gwyneth Dunwoody: Debates on Queen's Speeches always involve a wide range of subjects, and this is perhaps a good opportunity for Members to assess—to audit, even—what is happening not only in their own constituencies but within Parliament. On looking back at the changes that have taken place in Crewe and Nantwich in the past 10 years, I can see exactly why we should be positive and welcome the workmanlike terms of this Queen's Speech. New schools have been built in my constituency, including three new primary schools, one of which was custom-built in an area that was previously unable to get any assistance. Not one but three new health centres have been built, in which we are able to offer an enormous range of primary health care services. There has also been an explosion of university places. I am amused to think that within a very short period, Crewe and Nantwich will undoubtedly be known as a university town. I imagine that within the next 300 years, ours shall be regarded as the doyenne of those establishments, far outflanking those newcomers that claim credit for their students' background, general development and education.
	When I look back at the positive and useful things that have happened, it is important—indeed, essential—to relate them to the future. The future in Crewe and Nantwich is going to be sparkling and happy. Our unemployment has virtually disappeared and we are building new houses at an incredible rate, but we still have exactly the problems associated with deprivation that one of my hon. Friends identified earlier. We have all the deprivation factors that destroy lives, although happily, only within a very small area. For example, there are children who do not seem to benefit from Sure Start services or from the imaginative range of health and education services that could transform their future, and parents who are still unable to find anywhere decent to live.
	In conducting the "audit" to which I referred, perhaps we in this House could ask that housing associations be looked at closely. Those who persuaded local authorities to hand over their housing stock by advancing the argument that they would be able, through a housing association, to get all their repairs done, get all their buildings brought up to first-class status and achieve a truly high-class level of housing perhaps need to do some persuading that that is actually happening. Indeed, some housing authorities, struggling as they are to change people's circumstances, still have a vast backlog of repairs. They are finding it virtually impossible to rehouse people who would have been on the old housing authority lists—both young, small families and those who want to change their accommodation. The flexibility within the housing stock seems to have disappeared, and we do not yet seem able to address those problems.
	We must consider not only education and housing but transport, which is my field. To me, transport is a vital issue. For example, we are demanding a sparkling new station at Crewe, which will be the gateway to the north-west. We want either a proper development of the Victorian buildings or a genuinely new, architect-designed, superb station. Not only are all those things possible; we shall insist on their being created.
	However, the reality is that in order to push such change and to hold together the myriad streams needed for funding and development, we need a sound, carefully researched and defensible local authority structure. The Government decided—one understands why—that the changes in local authorities were such that we should not only seriously look at the whole question of restructuring, but ask where we can make serious advances. Those of us who know that there is increasing demand in Whitehall for shared services and for reorganising not only the number of jobs, but where they are and how they are done, recognise that local government cannot expect to escape that. However, it is essential that we do not make changes that, far from providing bigger sums of money, better planning and more imaginative schemes, go back two or three steps by splitting local authorities, making many of them unviable and difficult to support. I am afraid that we in Cheshire are in danger of doing that.
	When a reorganisation of local government in Cheshire was originally suggested, I looked carefully at both sets of figures. I had no particular animus toward one set or the other, because frankly, like Members of all political parties, I had councillors on both sides of the argument. I looked carefully at the proposed split and I must confess that I assumed—wrongly—that once the Government had looked at the economics of it, they would not argue the case any further. Splitting Cheshire into two unitary authorities would cost more than £100 million, and the new authorities would run out of reserves in their first year of operation. Many of the things that are essential to me, such as planning the new education and transport services, would rely on two authorities that might be—perhaps inevitably would be—under different forms of political control. Those authorities would have to be prepared to vire money from their own budget into the budget next door, which is controlled by their opponents. I have great faith in human nature, but I find that an unlikely scenario and one that causes me considerable difficulty.
	The financial case for a single Cheshire unitary authority is proven. It meets the Government's affordability criteria, generating a surplus of £58 million over the five-year payback period. It can be demonstrated because it relates not to the existing county, but to a new idea of a county region responding to the flows across Cheshire, connecting with Liverpool in one direction, Manchester in another, the potteries in a third, and north Wales and Shrewsbury in a fourth, so that ours is a most flexible and increasingly imaginative area. If we were to go ahead with splitting Cheshire in the way that has been suggested, worrying things would happen.
	Although four districts asked for this split, their own advisers, Deloitte, examined the affordability material and assessed 78 per cent. of the categories of cost as being above normal risk. That led the Conservative-controlled authority that had originally asked for this to say that it was giving the information to the Department, but that it did not now support the idea. That is mildly worrying. Furthermore, three sets of figures have been submitted on this bid, but totally different assessments have been made each time and they have been found to be seriously wanting in a number of fields. I do not have the time to set those out today. The reality is that the political argument—this is not party political—for this change is not proven.
	There is an appetite for unitary government in Cheshire, and the Government are right to identify it. The two unitary authorities idea lacks credibility and stakeholder support. The letter that the Secretary of State sent demonstrated that it would be supported only if the facts and figures added up and were plainly and clearly demonstrable. They are not, and the case is clearly made the other way.
	Those who support local government and who want to see it leading in those fields that are most important, supporting the work of the Labour Government and providing the sort of leadership that only locally-elected people can provide, know that local authorities must themselves be viable if they are able to fulfil that role and must have the support of the people who elected them. I am sure that the Secretary of State will understand that that is not the case in respect of the proposal for Cheshire to be divided from top to bottom. I know that she will reconsider the figures when they are presented to her.

Edward Leigh: I heartily agree with that. Of course, this will be denied by the Government, but that is the view of the rural communities.
	That view is buttressed by what is happening to post offices. Lincolnshire faces a swathe of closures of apparently productive and profitable post offices that serve the community. The Public Accounts Committee constantly examines areas of waste and incompetence. We do not get involved in party politics; last week, we examined job-creation schemes. One such scheme was spending £73,000 per job, yet my constituents see that profitable, successful post offices that serve the rural community face extinction. We are talking about people who often work for small salaries and who provide an essential public service. No business case is offered for this, and gagging orders are served, so we cannot be given the facts. We write to Ministers and to the chairman of the Post Office, but we do not receive answers. The Government must address the real feeling of rural communities in this country that they are suffering in so many ways in terms of funding. Our Lincolnshire police force is at the bottom of the Government funding league—no county is more badly funded.
	I now come to my main theme. Places such as Lincolnshire are, for the first time in their history, faced with a wave of immigration. So many of the issues that my councillors were talking about last week were based on worries about immigration. In a sense, we can have a healthy debate, because one can now talk about immigration without being accused of indulging in racist undertones. This immigration is coming from eastern Europe. The people are extremely welcome, individually and in groups, and they are hard working. However, 40 per cent. of the children in some schools in Boston speak only a foreign language. We welcome them because they will contribute to the community and within just a few months they will learn English. Apart from having difficult, foreign-sounding names, like the hon. Member for Montgomeryshire (Lembit pik), they will be completely indistinguishable from British people in a few months.
	However, where is the Government funding to provide all the services that those people need? This is not a traditional immigration debate about people who have a different ethos coming to places such as Lincolnshire. This is simply a practical debate about how we ensure that the roads, schools and all the rest of it are in place to provide for people. The Government need to provide some answers. But, if we are to be honest about the immigration debate, we must also consider immigration from outside the EU. Personally, I think that the Muslim minority in this country provides an enormous amount of individuality and creativity, and is hugely beneficial. However, the Government have mishandled the whole Muslim question in two ways. First, they have been far too weak in dealing with Muslim extremism. The Government have not made it clear that people are welcome in this country, but primarily because they see themselves as British. We have only to look at the wave of Jewish immigration into this country in the early part of the 20th century to see how successful that community has been in integrating fully into our society. It is now represented in many spheres, right at the very top of society.
	We have to be firm with the leaders of the Muslim community and say to them, You are very welcome, but you have to integrate. I am very concerned about the creation of a ghetto mentality in the Muslim community, with Muslim faith schools, in which people spend too long in an introverted system. I would much rather see them integrate fully into the education system.
	The other way in which the Government are mishandling the issue is in foreign and defence affairs. I shall stray a little into that area, if you will forgive me, Mr. Deputy Speaker, as I think that I am allowed to do so. The Government have alienated the Muslim minority in this country and throughout the world through their policies on Iraq, in particular, and Afghanistan, to a lesser extent. It is well known that I voted against the Iraq war, and I shall not go over that again. However, in the Liaison Committee over the past year, I have repeatedly asked detailed questions of the former Prime Minister, and I have also asked the Secretary of State for Defence what on earth is going on in Iraq. Answers have not been forthcoming.
	We have had an answer from a senior serving officer, responsible for thousands of troops, who told a Sunday newspaper that the decision to pull soldiers out of the centre of Basra last month came after commanders concluded that using Iraqi forces would be more effective. He said:
	We would go down there dressed as Robocop, shooting at people if they shot at us, and innocent people were getting hurt. We don't speak Arabic to explain and our translators were too scared to work for us any more. What benefit were we bringing to these people?
	The article also states:
	British forces have struck a deal with Shia militias to withdraw to a single base at the international airport in return for assurances that they will no longer be attacked.
	The fact is that the invasion of Iraq was a fundamental diplomatic and military disaster. It has given enormous impetus to Muslim extremism and we are still making mistakes there. We are still alienating Muslim opinion. We have got out of Basra and it appears that the only victors there are the Muslim militias. I voted against the war and I think that we should get out as soon as possible.
	There are also real dangers facing us in Afghanistan. I know that terrorism is a real problem there, and we should by all means go in there to deal with it. But if we think that we can impose our western liberal values on Iraq or Afghanistan, we are deluding ourselves.

Edward Leigh: Of course I agree with that. Probably everyone sitting in this Chamber agrees deep down, although they cannot say it publicly, that we have mishandled Muslim opinion and that we have failed to learn from what we achieved in Northern Ireland. It has been a mistake to try to impose our values and we are paying the pricethrough substantially increased spending on our security services.
	If we are to have an honest debate about immigration and local government, we must also have an honest debate about education and health policy. I suspect a lack of momentum in those areas. We had a Public Accounts Committee report only a couple of weeks ago on the academy programme. Large sums of money are being spent on academies, but the evidence shows that their results are below the national average. I know that they are placed in difficult areas and that some are catching up, but I question whether we are just recreating the comprehensive schools that were built in the 1960s. The first such schools experienced a surge in interest and academic standards, but because we did not address the fundamental flaws in the education system, they ultimately became failed schools. When the new paint has rubbed off in 20 years' time, the academies could also become failed schools.
	I have a simple solution that I have advanced consistentlyalthough I have perhaps not brought my Front Benchers with mewhich is giving head teachers the freedom to run their schools in the way that they want. That means giving them freedom over budgets, over hiring and firing teachers and over selecting, deselecting and expelling pupils. I am not talking about a return to grammar schools, because that debate misses the point. I am talking about more freedom for head teachers.
	This very day, my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr. Duncan Smith), a former leader of the Conservative party, is launching a new scheme for pathfinder schools in some of the most difficult areas. Those schools will provide real hope and opportunity in those areas, becoming beacons of excellence. But we have to set them free. If the academies are to be successful, they have to have that freedom.
	That suggestion is not some weird idea from a right-wing think tank. Look at what is happening in Holland and in Sweden, of all countries. Sweden has had continual social democratic government for the last half century and it has a universal voucher scheme. It is also introducingalthough this is not generally knowna voucher scheme for hospitals. It is privatising hospitals and providing beacons within its national health service, delivering real choice. I strongly believe that politics is about empowerment, about providing ordinary peoplethrough vouchers or any other meansthe real empowerment in health and education that better off people already have.

Austin Mitchell: It is a pleasure to follow the Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee. I shall not follow him all the way to Iraq, although I do share some of the concerns that he raised on the issue of immigration. However, I wish to speak mainly about housing. As my hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mrs. Dunwoody) pointed out, after 10 years of this Government, we all sense a general improvement in the quality of the health service, hospitals and transport in our constituencies, but housing is one of the weaker areas in that general improvement, and that is why I wish to concentrate on it.
	I welcome the commitment to an expanding housing drive in the Queen's Speech, which will be pushed through by the new Minister for Housing. My right hon. Friend is not in her place at present, but she carries all our good will and will bring a new intelligence and dynamism to the housing issue. Having made that sycophantic point, I wish to raise certain problems in housing. We have tried to drive forward on housing while carrying an excessive burden from the past of failed policies, which will make it more difficult to make progress. It is a huge problem, because the building record has been poor. The supply and demand equation has featured in the escalation in house prices.
	More importantly, under the Tories there was a long period of disinvestment in council and social housing that produced horrendous problems on housing estates. I draw the House's attention to the research done by Leon Feinstein, of the university of London's institute of education, entitled The Public Value of Social Housing. It analyses the relationship between housing and life chances and shows that the housing estates were very mixed communities in the 1950s. Very often, they were a springboard for success and social advance. By the turn of the century, however, thanks to disinvestment and the fact that the scarcity of public rented housing meant that they had become dumping grounds, the estates had become a drag on performance. They were associated with high unemployment and a comparative failure in life chances.
	It is a shocking report, and the ground has to be made up. The problem is huge, and the Government must shed some of the burdens of failed policies in the past. They should take the money used on those policies and put it into the housing construction and refurbishment drives, as otherwise success will not be achievedespecially given the short time scale that now remains.
	I have various criticisms to make, therefore, although I shall not make them in the spirit of a performance at the Bolling working men's club, which was what the Opposition spokesman gave us earlier. I want to offer more sensible criticisms of some of our policies that are not working as they should.
	First, I turn to the pathfinder programme. Some time ago on the Tonight programme, Trevor McDonald revealed that, under the pathfinder programme, viable terraced housing that could be reconditioned very cheaply was being pulled down and replaced with far more expensive housing that people did not want. That has been a feature of the pathfinder programme's performance.
	In addition, the National Audit Office has released a report on housing market renewal through the pathfinder programme, and I shall be able to tell the House about it at one minute past 12 noon tomorrow. However, I can say today that it is very critical and that it states that the programme does not provide good value for money. The pathfinder programme is disappointing, and the money spent on it could be used elsewhere.
	Secondly, I emphasise that there can be no successful housing drive without councils' full and enthusiastic co-operation. Yet the Government continue to pressure councils, keeping them short of the money that they need to do the job in respect of housing because they prefer them to privatise their housing stocks. Councils are still being bullied, bamboozled and bribed into going for privatisation, even though it is an expensive programme in itself. Enormous gap funding is required for the new housing associations, there is a big debt write-off and the NAO has estimated that the costs per property of the whole transfer programme at about 700. That money could go to housing, but in fact it is being spent on estate agents, lawyers, consultants and accountants all over the country.
	It is wrong for the Government to maintain the pressure to privatise housing. That pressure should be suspended until we put local authorities on a favourable financial footing so that they can play on a level playing field against the registered social landlords. At present, the playing field is not level, especially when it comes to RSLs' ability to borrow and the debt write-off that they enjoy.
	The Government are alienating local authorities instead of co-operating with them, but 3 million council properties remain in council control, often through arm's length management organisations. More than 100 authorities have rejected transfer or decided not to go for it, and the Minister for Housing has said that 95 per cent. of them can meet the decent homes target by the dates to which we committed in our manifesto. However, many are forced to get money for repairs and refurbishment by selling off council housing and the sites to private developers.
	It cannot make sense to try and increase the stock of public rented housing by selling it off and pulling it down. Yet that is what is happening in places such as Sheffieldwhere my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Attercliffe (Mr. Betts) and I were due to speak against the policy at a meeting tonightBirmingham and Camden. The Minister of Housing has said that the amount pulled down will be less than the amount of new build, but that cannot be true in Camden, where very little land, if any, is available for council housing.

Ian Paisley: I should like to associate myself and my colleagues with the sympathy expressed for the fighters against the fire. I am sure that our prayers and sympathies are with all those who feel that great loss today.
	I want to use the fact that in this debate wide scope is given to us to comment on things that are on our minds. I am suffering great fears as far as my Province is concerned at the present time. I hope that the Minister will bring what I am going to say to his colleagues. We had a police officer shot in the city of Londonderry this morning. He was taking his child to a local school. He was a member of the Roman Catholic Church. He was shot with a shotgun and he has suffered serious injuries. It is not for me to say who is responsible for this, but I am told on good authority that the IRA dissidents are definitely under the shadow of this particular crime. If that is so, we could be going back to things that we thought we had finally conquered.
	I trust that this House will understand how the people in Northern Ireland feel. I am sure that we will be able to get the victory, but it will only come when there is rigorous law enforcement and those who do these deeds know that they cannot get away with them. I make an appeal to the authorities about this matter. As the House is aware, this is not a devolved matter. It is not a matter for me or the Assembly.
	The other matter that I want to tell the House about is a very sad matter indeed. A young boy called Dean Clarke was sold a drug pill for 50p on the open market. It was sold to him in an area that is dominated by Protestant paramilitaries. The young boy took the pill; he has since died. That is something that I must underscore today. I make a call to the Government to take immediate action on open drug selling in parts of Belfast. The evangelical Presbyterian minister who has been in that place for many years went to the police and gave them evidence. He went himself and publicly bought these tablets from the sellers for 50p. For 50p, this young boy's life was taken. That is intolerable, and I trust that the House and the Government will understand just how we feel. Nevertheless, we must press on toward the mark. I look forward to the day when I will not need to stand up in this House and bring such a message, but I feel that the urgency of it needs to be impressed on us all.

Mark Hoban: I am grateful for the opportunity to take part in this debate on the Gracious Speech. I want to focus on the issues in the speech that particularly affect my constituents in Fareham. Those topics happen to be the subject of the earlier interchanges between the Front Benchershousing and planning. Let me give the House some background that will enable hon. Members to understand my concerns, and why I am articulating the concerns of my constituents.
	Fareham borough council is one of a number of councils in south Hampshire that have formed the Partnership for Urban South Hampshire, to develop plans that will form part of the south-east plan. The partnership proposes that 80,000 houses be built in the area between just to the west of Southampton, through Portsmouth to Havant. Under those plans, 13,000 houses will be built in my constituency over 20 years10,000 in a strategic development area, and 3,000 in areas of Fareham that are already developed. The plans are partly to help stimulate economic growth, and partly to accommodate population growth in the area. The population studies that the councils commissioned to help inform their decisions show that in the 20 years from 2006 there will be an extra 53,200 single-person households, and only an extra 5,700 new family households. It is clear from the analysis that has been done that there is demand for more houses in the area.
	Despite the logic that underpins those plans, my constituents have some concerns about development, which are rooted in their experiences to dateand are not, I hope, a reflection of the experiences they will have in future. They have three particular concerns: infrastructure, density and location, and a lack of democratic accountability.
	In Fareham, there has been rapid development over the past 20 or 30 years. New communities have grown up, but there has also been a shortfall in infrastructure. Whiteley, for example, is a community split between Fareham and Winchester. It has a single primary school, which does not have enough places for the children in the community, who have to be bussed to other side of the M27 to schools elsewhere in my constituency. In September I was proud to open a new permanent GP surgery in Whiteley. It is the first and only such surgery in Whiteley; the doctors were operating out of portakabins until earlier this year. There is one road in and out of Whiteley, and 3,000 to 4,000 houses, and residents think that new houses are being built without adequate infrastructure. Elsewhere in the borough, there has been large-scale infill development in recent years, but Blackbrook maternity hospital has closed, there is no investment in new road schemes, and it is difficult for local residents to find a dentist in the area. For them, new housing means pressure on existing local services, and they cannot see the Government taking any steps to relieve that pressure.
	Hampshire county council and other local councils supported the south Hampshire rapid transit scheme, which proposed to operate a tram through Gosport into Portsmouth. Unfortunately, the Department for Transport decided not to proceed with the funding of that scheme, yet no other funding has been made available to improve public transport. Interestingly, the panel empowered by the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government to investigate the south-east plan said in its report that it was regrettable that the rapid transit scheme did not proceed, because when people were considering how to accommodate the additional housing growth in the area, they would have to look afresh at public transport and other schemes to improve infrastructure. Local people therefore believe that development has taken place without the incentive of new infrastructure to maintain or enhance their quality of life.
	Density and location are a concern because there are not many brownfield industrial sites in Fareham, so most brownfield development has taken place in back gardens. Fareham has topped Hampshire's garden-grabbing league for the past two years, and people ascribe the change in their residential environment to the building of new blocks of flats. Those problems are not exclusive to Fareham, and are experienced throughout south Hampshire. We are told that high density is important to improve affordability, but the price of those flats is four or five times the average salary of people in Fareham, so they are not necessarily affordable developments. Problems caused by the lack of infrastructure are therefore compounded by changes in residential areas.
	Local people are concerned, too, about the lack of control over development. They do not believe that they have a say in development, because central Government's control is too strong, so their protests are ignored. The combination of a deteriorating quality of life, development that changes the character of an area and a lack of local accountability causes people to be frustrated with development and anxious about what will happen to their community in future. They will get no relief from the housing and planning Bills that are to be introduced, and they regard the proposals to move planning from regional assemblies to regional development agencies, following the shift from counties to RDAs in the last planning Act, as moving power further and further away from people and their elected representatives. The evidence from the Partnership for Urban South Hampshire is that local councils can work together at sub-regional level to tackle those issues. The Government need to learn that decisions do not need to happen at the regional level or in Whitehall, but can happen at the local level. The proposal to move decisions further and further up the chain alienates people from the political process at the local level.
	My constituents are concerned, too, about the planning charge in the pre-Budget report; legislation may be required to introduce it in this Parliament. It is a response to criticism about the planning gains supplement, but my constituents are concerned about the small print. They are worried that money raised on houses built in Fareham, Southampton and Portsmouth could be taken away and spent on other priorities in the region. They regard it as a stealth tax, as money is taken out of the local area to be used elsewhere. Money could also be raised in other areas in the south-east and channelled into Fareham, Portsmouth and Southampton, but that would mean that another group of peopleanother Member's constituentswould be disfranchised, and would not receive the economic benefit of developments in their area.
	The money raised by the planning charge should therefore be spent in the area where it is raised, unless local councils agree that it should be spent elsewhere. Local councils across the south-east, for example, agreed that the Hindhead tunnel to improve road connections from Hampshire and Surrey to London was a regional priority. They took voluntary action to back the regional plan. People are prepared to work collectively to support such projects, but they will not be happy if they are compelled to pass up money raised from houses built in their area so that it can be used for projects elsewhere.
	The lack of democratic accountability and the risk that money raised by the planning charge will be used elsewhere may exacerbate people's alienation from the planning process in areas such as south Hampshire. If the Government intend to pursue the policy of centrally imposed targets for Hampshire and other parts of the south-east, they must will both the ends and the means. Too often, the Government say that the money will be made available for infrastructure, but people in south Hampshire need clear evidence that they are prepared to step up to the plate. They do not want a repeat of what has happened in Whiteley and other parts of south Hampshire, where infrastructure has not kept pace with house building and economic development.
	Until the Government recognise the need for change, the measures on planning and housing mentioned in the Gracious Address will not address the concerns of people in my constituency. If we are to tackle growing frustration with the planning system, we need a change in approach. We need to move away from top-down big government that takes powers away from local communities, and away from money being raised by the planning charge in one area to be used in another. We need to give back to local communities the right to determine how development affects their area, and the responsibility for meeting their housing needs. Local communities must see the fruits of development, so we must provide incentives to improve infrastructure. The Gracious Speech does not show that the Government can provide the change that the country needs. People in my constituency are desperate for change: they are desperate for more local accountability and local responsibility. The Government talk about that, but they do not deliver. I believe that the Conservatives can talk about it, act on it and deliver it.

David Howarth: Yes, indeed. If we add up the carbon budgets over the entire period, we will get a volume target. That is how it is supposed to work. It would just make more sense to have that volume target in the Bill from the start, and to recognise that what we are talking about here is the overall level of emissions, rather than simply an end-year target.
	My first point on targets relates to whether all greenhouse gases should be included in the Bill. At the moment, only carbon dioxide is included, although the other five greenhouse gases have greater greenhouse effects than carbon dioxide. It is important, therefore, that the Bill covers not only carbon dioxide but all the gases that can cause this problem. The Government now seem to be conceding that point, at least in principle, and saying that there should be a power to include the other gases in the Bill. I want them to go further, however; I want there to be a duty to include them. This relates to the question of credibility and of the Government giving away power.
	My second point relates to international aviation and shipping. The Tyndall centre's figures show that, even assuming a reduction in the rate of increase in aviation over the next 40 years, international aviation and shipping will add about a quarter to the greenhouse gases that we emitabout an extra 1.5 gigatonnes.
	There was some difference in the evidence given to the Committees by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the Department for Transport. The DFT was keen to say that the issue was complicated and that there were various ways to bring international aviation into the picture, but the best way forward is to make a start now, as the hon. Member for Bedford said. The Tyndall Centre suggested a perfectly good way of allocating international aviation emissions. It would not be exactly the same as the eventual international agreement, but it would be close enough. It is important to start now. There would be far less disruption if we made an approximate but pretty good estimate now and then changed it slightly in a few years time than if we failed to act at all now and had to incorporate an enormous change before 2012, which we are committed to do under the European Union emissions trading scheme. That also needs to be a duty and not just a power.
	My third point is on the target to have a 60 per cent. reduction by 2050. I accept that we need an end-point target as well as a volumetric target, but the evidence is overwhelming that 60 per cent. is not enough. The Stern report said that there is between a 63 and 99 per cent. chance that a 60 per cent. reduction would lead to an increase in temperatures of greater than 2, which is the target that we are all working to. The Tyndall Centre said that if we include international aviation and shipping, the original draft of the Bill implies a 50 per cent. chance of a 4 increase, which would be practically catastrophic. We would reach the stage at which feedback mechanisms might come into the picture. We need a clearer target.
	The Tyndall Centre said that if we want a 70 per cent. chance of not exceeding 2, we cannot emit more than 4.8 gigatonnes over the period between now and 2050. That implies a much stricter end-point target than 60 per cent.; it is at least 80 per cent. I know about the view that there is no consensus how far the reduction target should go, but there is a consensus that 60 per cent. is too little and that it has to be at least 80 per cent. The 80 per cent. target needs to be stated in the Bill and the power of the Committee to recommend a target should apply to going above 80 per cent., not 60 per cent.

David Howarth: My hon. Friend is right. That is the evidence that the Committees heard. It is generally accepted that that is the case.
	My fourth point is on the 2020 interim target. The Bill says that there should be a minimum of 26 per cent. and a maximum of 32 per cent. There is no reason to have a maximum target. The Committees could not understand that. The Government seem to have been persuaded to include that by the CBI on the grounds that we do not want to go too far, but we cannot go too far in tackling climate change. The Government's latest response is that if we go above 32 per cent., that can be banked for the next period, but that lets the pressure off the next period and we should not do that.
	The main point about the carbon budgets is where the debate started and where it has got to. Again, the hon. Member for Bedford is right about that. The debate started as, apparently, a debate about multi-year versus single-year targetsabout whether budgets should be set over a multi-year period or a single yearbut I think it has now established that we need both. We need a multi-year target to deal with variations and longer-term projects, and also an annual review. The same applies to the financial planning of Government. We have the comprehensive spending review, and we used to have the multi-year financial strategy. We need that kind of longer-term planning, but it does not preclude the need for annual audits: it does not mean that we should stop checking the position year on year.
	I am still undecided on whether the multi-year framework should be five years or some other period. The Government have advanced an argument for five years, but a three-year target would be in line with domestic policy and the CSR. Ultimately, we must decide not just how to set the targets but how to fulfil them. According to my many years' experience of government at local level, if the money is not there, the policy is not there either. Policy is governed by money. I think that there is still quite a strong case for a three-year domestic policy cycle.
	I want to know why the Government are resisting the notion of an annual debate. Such debates should take a particular form, which I think is what the Government are resisting. We need to check each year whether enough progress has been made. The Government should come to the House and say either We think that enough progress has been made: we may have missed the target by a bit, but it is not necessary for us to do anything about it or We need to change course: here are some proposals. The Opposition can then say whether they agree that we are on course, or whether they agree with the proposed policy measures.
	That would put the Opposition on the spot as much as the Government. The Opposition could not just hang around saying The Government are not succeeding: they should do better. They would have to say what they would do instead. I think that an annual process involving a substantive motion, amendable by the Opposition, would sharpen the debate considerably. The fact that the Government oppose the idea strikes me as another example of their unwillingness to cede power.
	The issue of the budgeting framework also involves the question of banking and borrowing. I do not agree with the proposition that if the budgets go off course a little, nothing need be done. A proper annual review would prevent the problem from arising, but allowing banking and borrowing simply lets the Government off the hook when it comes to keeping on course over the multiple years.
	A further problem with budgeting is the use of foreign credits, which arose in all the Committees. It seems that the Government intend to use foreign credits to get themselves out of a hole when missing targets or budgets. The Committee of which I was a member recommended that the climate change committee should advise on the use of foreign credits and set numerical limits. That, I think, is the key point: while the Government appear to recognise the problem caused by excessive use of foreign credits, they seem unwilling to accept the idea of numerical limits. Again, I think that that is to do with the balance of power between the committee and the Government, and I think that the Government will have to give way.
	Other technical matters could be raised, such as the question of legal enforceability, with which I could bore the House for many hours. The matters that I have raised today all relate to the same question: they all relate to whether the Government are willing to give away more power and accept more duties. If they do, their credibility will rise, and their ability to act both internationally and domestically will improve. I urge them to make those changes.

Alan Whitehead: I am pleased to follow the hon. Member for Cambridge (David Howarth) who served with me on the Joint Committee on the draft Climate Change Bill. He underlined a number of issues concerning the Bill which I also wish to address.
	Before addressing the detail of the Bill, it is necessary to reflect on what it now represents. I say to those who claim that the Queen's Speech is not visionary and lacks substance that this Bill has an astonishing amount of substance. The architecture will, we hope, last many years and ensure that we move from a profligate carbon-energy economy to a low energy and low carbon economy. It provides the means and framework by which we can achieve that. It is right to say that we must get this right and that there might be ways in which we could better move towards achieving our goal, but it is momentous that we will in this coming parliamentary Session be debatingand, hopefully, all agree ona Bill that achieves that goal.
	The Bill sets that architecture up not only in terms of the targets that have been mentioned. It is important that we pay attention, as we have done in Committee and elsewhere, to the question of which target is likely to enable us to get to the pointwhich must be a global point, not just a national pointthat we want to reach: the point above which we start encountering serious feedback effects. The generally recognised level for that is 2, and therefore talking about degrees rather than percentages might provide us with a more appropriate target in the long term.
	There are two important aspects of the architecture. There are the arrangements on carbon budgets so that we can continue to drive down the quantum of carbon year by yearfive-year period by five-year period. That is an essential element of the way forward because it is at least theoretically possible to reach one's targets over particular periods by being extremely profligate in the use of carbon and then shutting everything down for a short time, so that the target will have been met but nothing will have actually been done about the carbon that has been released over that period and which cannot be taken back.
	Another important aspect that is substantially covered in the Bill, but which has not received particular mention this afternoon, is the architecture of how we trade carbon in future within Europe and, hopefully, on a worldwide basis. The setting up of a number of protocols relating to how that carbon trading takes place is an important element of the Bill because, among other things, it will create pressure by establishing a value and price for carbon that drive the decisions that will be made within the carbon budget periods. That will help begin to ensure that decisions on different forms of energy use, and different forms of housing and land use, can be based on how carbon is running through the economy rather than just on bottom-line financial arrangements.
	It is important that we address the issue of carbon price in the context of another piece of proposed legislation in the Queen's Speech: the energy Bill. I have mentioned that some people have said there was little vision in the Queen's Speech. To address that, we need point no further than at other Bills referred to in it that should, can and will back up the Climate Change Bill architecture in terms of moving from a high carbon to a low carbon economy.
	The context in which the energy Bill is set is that in the next 15 years or soroughly the period of the first three carbon budgets in the Climate Change Billwe will need to renew some 40 per cent. of our power stations. All except one of the existing nuclear power stations will be decommissioned, as will a number of gas and coal-fired power stations. One thing that we do know is that we cannot replace those power stations with a gas power station economy, because we would simply burst open the carbon targets set in the Climate Change Bill. We also know that, whatever we think about nuclear power, when we have to replace that substantial part of our energy generating supply in that approximately 15-year period, it simply will not ride to the rescue. It will not be generating any powercertainly not by 2020, and probably not even by 2025unless very different proposals from the current ones on commissioning, planning, justification and so on are introduced, even allowing for the context of the planning Bill, which is also in the Queen's Speech. In renewing our power supply, the emphasis over the next 15 to 18 years will therefore have to be on renewables or near renewables.
	It is at this point that the question of the ends and the means of the Climate Change Bill comes into view. The energy Bill provides a different regime. Renewable obligation certificates encourage different forms of renewable energy to come on to the market, but the decisions that we will have to take about those forms of renewable energy will often be hard ones. Although the full support throughout the Chamber for the Climate Change Bill is most welcome, the reality is that once it is enacted, we will have to consider what we actually doeither with assistance and advice, or through the mechanism of this Chamberto ensure that those carbon budgets are maintained.
	We will undoubtedly face some controversial decisions, such as that on the Severn barrage. I welcome the recent announcement of substantial Government assistance for a feasibility study of the Severn barrage, which, if built, will provide some 5 per cent. of our future energy supplies on a renewable basis. However, its environmental impact on the Severn estuary, wildlife and so on will be controversial, so there will be trade-offs between our ends and our means.
	What concerns me is the bad signals emerging from early attempts to ensure that those future trade-offs have a positive impact on climate change. Reference has been made in this Chamber to the fact that the Conservatives are resisting the climate change levy, and the question was asked earlier this afternoon why we need carbon budgeting in the Climate Change Bill.
	We also heard a disgraceful depiction of a policy that is being put forward, which is deeply involved with the questions of what we do about climate change and how we organise our lives in such a way as to reduce our carbon emissions and the consequences of greenhouse gas emissions on our environment. I trust that the Climate Change Bill will contain this policy of ensuring that residents who act positively on recycling get rebates from their local authorities, that local authorities have the power to do that and, possibly, that people who take no action on recycling or on ensuring that their waste is managed in a reasonable way face some form of consequence. That relates very much to climate change, because if we do not recycle more, if we do not stop burying our rubbish in the ground, and if we do not use that waste as a resource to remove the sucking in of virgin materials and to ensure that the carbon consequences of that alternative way forward are recognised, we will simply allow our waste arisings to become a substantial repository of additional carbon emissions over a very long period of time.
	Simply to characterise such a policy as a spy in the bin, a chip in every waste bin and a stealth tax is disgraceful in terms of climate change commitments. I hope that the hon. Member for East Surrey (Mr. Ainsworth), who will sum up for Opposition, will dissociate himself from that characterisation. I respect the hon. Gentleman for his knowledge, experience and understanding of environmental matters, and he surely must have been squirming in his seat while that pantomime characterisation of a policy that is essential to an early approach on climate change and waste minimisation was discussed in this Chamber.
	This is about means and ends. We must get them both right. I welcome the measures in the Bill that get both of them right.

Mark Field: Naturally, the essence of any Queen's Speech is to identify challenges and attempt, through legislation, to address the issues of the day. Casual conversation and my constituency postbag alike convince me that demographic change is one of the most pressing challenges facing our nation. The requirement for a substantial increase in house building, which was discussed earlier, for a much-vaunted educational opportunity Bill and for the further promotion of local transport initiatives has, to a great degree, been dictated by the impact of largely unchecked immigration to these shores since the beginning of the decade.
	It is essential that immigration is assessed with a clear vision of the type of country in which we should like to live over the next 20 to 30 years. It is an uncomfortable truth that the British people have never been consulted, or honestly informed, about the scale of demographic change in this country over recent decades. We now need a long-term strategy that will both promote our economic welfare and enhance the quality of life and social cohesion for all.
	The mainstream political consensus over the past decade or so has been that the UK should play a full part in a free-market, free-trade global economy. I subscribe to that consensus along, I suspect, with many hon. Members. Given our history of political stability, our culture of openness and the benefits that arise from world business adopting our mother tongue as its lingua franca, ours is also a country to which many people seeking asylum from political turmoil will come. As a result, the political decision has been made enthusiastically to embrace skilled and hard-working people wishing to settle here from both outside and within the European Union.
	There has been a gradual realisation of increasing disquiet about the numbers of immigrants coming into the country. For sure, much of this unease is articulated by recent immigrants themselves, who have most to lose from any social unrest. Political leaders have traditionally shied away from addressing this contentious issue, but now we hear the adoption of slogans such as Immigration is too high and must be cut or British jobs for British people.
	Such superficially attractive solutions are not grounded in reality. For example, I believe that taking the easiest option to reduce the overall number of immigrants would be the most ill-advised route. Yes, we could substantially cut the number of immigrants by stopping all those who reside outside the EU coming to these shores, but we should consider the five main categories of people coming to live and often, but not always, to work here.
	The first category is the ever-expanding number of non-EU nationals, especially those working in highly skilled global industries such as financial services, the creative industries or IT and technology, where UK industry boasts such a leading position. No one could seriously suggest that a drastic reduction in that group would be advisable or desirable, whether in IT specialists from India and China, US investment bankers, or folk from Australia and New Zealand who work in the creative industries.
	Similarly, we might relatively easily slash the number of non-EU students coming to study here, or prevent them from staying on to work here for a year post graduation, which was a Labour Government initiative that I wholly supported. Indeed, I would prefer to see rights for graduates from abroad to work here after studying extended. International studentsespecially those from India and China, the big economic superpowers of the futurewill be more likely to return to their homeland as great ambassadors for this country if they have had the chance to study and to work here. It should be our strategy for the higher and further education that our educational establishments provide to students from across the globe to remain one of our greatest and most successful export industries.
	The third category comprises the dependants and relatives of previous immigrants who often arrive with relatively few skills and little understanding of the English language. I accept that that issue continues to be sensitive. As someone who represents an inner-city seat, I deal with dozens of such cases. I support dealing more robustly with those who rely on family and marital ties, irrespective of their likely contribution to this country, but there are strong practical reasons why many of those immigrants will continue to come to these shores.
	Fourthly, we could stop or drastically reduce the number of asylum seekers who continue to come here as political refugees. They amounted to some 25,000 last year, for example. I speak as someone whose mother was twice a refugee by the age of 15, so I do not intend to be harsh. We are, rightly, signatories to several international agreements and, short of withdrawing from those treaties, we need to recognise that genuine asylum seekers will continue to come and often remain here.
	Finally, as other hon. Members have pointed out, the other major immigration influx has come in the past three and a half years since the enlargement of the EU, from Poland, the Baltic states and more recentlyalbeit with some tighter restrictions, which I supportfrom Romania and Bulgaria. Vast underestimates were made as to the numbers from EU accession states who would come to live and work in this country after May 2004. Yet there is absolutely nothing that we can do about it, because we are fully signed up to the concept of free movement of people within the EU.
	Today with the large numbers of new immigrants from Europe, Africa and beyond we have little cheap housing and our health service, transport and educational infrastructures are under increasing strain, as we have gathered from contributions from Members on both sides of the House. Nor is it exclusively a problem in London. The disquiet about immigration, as was the case in the 1950s, is from everyday folk who feel that their quality of life is being badly affected by the increased need for housing, school places and other local services.

Mark Field: I very much accept that. One of the difficulties that a nationalised health service has, as a monopoly employer, is that it is able to drive wage rates down to levels that make jobs less acceptable to too many of the indigenous population. The hon. Lady is right, and I recognise what she says in both the hospitals in my constituency, Barts and St. Mary's, Paddington. It would be impossible to run those hospitals without significant amounts of immigrant labour.
	We seem to be at a loss as to what to do now. Over recent months, we have heard several slogans. Many argue that we should provide public services only to those new arrivals to these shores who have already made a financial contribution. Our public sector ethosto which the hon. Lady referredmakes such a hard-and-fast rule unenforceable. None the less, the originators of our national health service never expected it to become the free at the point of need international health service. One statistic shows that the UK spent some 42 million this year on treating HIV-infected folk from abroad, even though some NHS trusts have massive deficits. Those deficits are not as big as they have been in previous years, but the point remains. At my local hospitalSt. Mary's, Paddingtonit is estimated that more than 3 million was lost to NHS tourism last year. I am afraid that that sum represents a deterioration in the quality of health care offered to my constituents and those of the hon. Member for Regent's Park and Kensington, North (Ms Buck).
	Demographic change, especially at the pace of the past half decade, is a problem. I worry that what should be a great national debate on the potential benefits and drawbacks of immigration is likely to degenerate into a blizzard of statistics. Alongside that, I think that there will be a political imperative to set and reach annual targets of maximum quotas. In my view, that will lead to a distortion of statistics, priorities and our economic needs.
	It came as no surprise to me that last week the Government recalibrated sharply upwards the numbers of immigrants working here. Within days, the total rose from 800,000 to 1.1 million and then to 1.5 million. No doubt the highest figure will be used as the baseline from which to measure success in bringing totals down in the years ahead, but I believe that that approach is entirely wrong. Our goal should be to encourage and reward hard work and the development of marketable skills among those brought up and living here. Equally, we should make it ever harder for people who are not prepared to contribute fully to our communities to come to, and remain in, the UK.
	In that regard, business has an important role to play. Too often, businesses both large and small have ignored their broader responsibilities in respect of immigration. For sure, there is an ever expanding pool of willing immigrant labour that helps to drive down wage levels, along the lines that I set out earlier, with the result that business may have all too little incentive to look at some of the downsides of unchecked immigration. Many commercial concerns are only too happy to employ foreign labour without regard to the effects that that may have on the provision of health, education and transport in their community, but at the same time we condemn so many of our indigenous, home- grown youngsters to lives without jobs, practical education or training.
	The operation of our benefits system has also helped to make it far less attractive for some British people to work full time. All too often, those people prefer to rely on tax credits or other benefits. Housing benefit in particular means that people, especially in the capital, need to earn considerably more than the minimum wage to make working worth their while. That cannot be right.
	The unemployment rate in central London is 8.5 per cent., yet there are literally hundreds of thousands of people, from central Europe and beyond, working in this city of ours. We all know that it is impossible to get served in a bar or restaurant without meeting a Pole or a Lithuanian, or the like.
	It is all well and good for the Government to boast about having increased the number of jobs in the country, and all the statistics suggest that they have done exactly that. However, in all too many cases, they have failed to ensure that Britons have the skills, application and aptitude to take up many of the new opportunities offered by the modern world. That failure is evident even after every pupil in this country has been through a dozen years of compulsory education. It is a shameful and disgraceful legacy.
	The general economic picture has remained rosy, but we have turned a blind eye to the failure to educate an unacceptably large cohort of the younger generation. Today's employment opportunities may well be snapped up by eager young men and women from central Europe, and economic growth may continue apace, but soonperhaps very soonthere will be a reckoning. We now have millions of young British men and women growing up and leading perhaps chaotic lifestyles who are unable to offer the basic capabilities and aptitudes needed even in unskilled labour. If the UK wishes to remain a high-wage nation, we need all our people to have commensurately high skills.
	The relatively clement economic picture has allowed us to turn a blind eye to many of the problems that I have described, but the refusal to arrest our educational failings has the makings of a long-term dysfunction in our society. The challenge may not be immediately apparent today, but I fear that in the years ahead we shall repent the fact that the first decade of the 21st century was very much the best of times. Our failure to respond to the deeper, long-term malaise that I have set out will haunt us in the decades to come.

Karen Buck: Before making my remarks on housing, I want to pick up one or two issues raised in the debate. First, a couple of hon. Members have referred to education, including the Chair of the Public Accounts Committee, the hon. Member for Gainsborough (Mr. Leigh), who talked about the academies programme. I think I can confidently state that I am the only parent in Parliament who has a child in an academy school. Let me say that I, for one, go down on my knees in gratitude for the three new academy schools in my constituency. Together, they will account for about 100 million of new buildings when completed. Those buildings replace a dilapidated, ugly and brutal three-site failing school. We hear so much nonsense and mythology about the schools programme, but it is right that the schools that were in the greatest need and in trouble have been the priority for new buildings and management.
	New buildings alone are not going to transform children's educational experience. One of the worrying contexts that we are failing to address on both sides of the House is the extent to which schools have polarised in terms of their intake. New buildings or no new buildings, devolved management or no devolved management, it will be impossible to provide all our children, especially those from the most challenged backgrounds, with the quality of education that they need if we do not have a mixed intake. A voucher-type scheme is the worst possible option. In some ways we have a de facto voucher scheme now, because parents apply for the most popular schoolsthose in highest demandand those schools choose their parents and children. It is not a case of parents and children choosing those schools. As a result, the schools that are less popular gradually ratchet downwards, to become schools of last resort. That has to be turned around. Many different polices will be needed, including the academies programme and resource allocation. We need to be far more rigorous and honest about what is happening in our schools because of their admissions policies, and what we need to do to ensure a balanced intake.
	The second issue that has arisen a couple of times is migration. I was grateful to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government for seeing some of us a few weeks ago to discuss the impact of new arrival communities on local services. We need to discuss the extent to which, while central Government benefit from migration and the contribution that migrants make to the economy, local communities have to deal with the service consequences of changing or growing populations. The problem is decades old; it is not new. We have to address it, but before we do, we must go further in ensuring that we have a reasonably accurate count of who is living in our local communities.
	Again, it is easy to go for glib soundbites. No open democratic society in the world knows with absolute certainty what its population is, or where it is at any given time. As a member of the Home Affairs Committee, I was fortunate enough to go to Washington a couple of weeks ago. The American Government believe that there are 20 million people in the country who are not documented and whose location they do not know. It is a global problem, but what we can do is improve our capacity to measure at local level.
	In 2001 I was a lone voice. It gives me no satisfactionwell, actually it does give me some satisfactionto know that I was right. I was alone in saying that the local census count in my borough in central London would prove to be catastrophically wrong. I telephoned the censors and the Government during the weeks running up to the census to say there were whole estates to which forms had not been delivered, and which would therefore disappear from the count. We knew very well at an early stage that the count would be inaccurate. Incidentally, my local council took no interest in the possibility of an inaccurate population count until 18 months later, when the census was returned and it found that it had lost 24,000 people. Then it suddenly became a matter of great interest.
	The Office for National Statistics had been wrong, and refused to admit it. Only now are we beginning to elicit from the ONS some recognition that its methods alone cannot cope with what is happening in our urban communities. It is not just to do with migration, although migration is part of it; it is also to do with churn, an issue that is hugely under-recognised by government at all levels. A population in which 30 per cent. of households move every year has massive implications for the delivery of services such as schools, social services and benefits, because it is very hard to count. When diverse communities exist along with communities with large numbers of properties in multiple occupation and a high level of mobility, a dry statistical measurement will simply not be enough. It is the services at the sharp end that will be affected, and it is the people who depend most on those servicesoften the most vulnerablewho will not be counted and will therefore not be provided with services.
	The Government need to recognise that the Local Government Association has a point. It may have its own political axe to grind, but it has a point about numbers. They also need to recognise that we must vastly improve the partnership approach to the measurement of population. That involves not just the ONS, national insurance numbers and GP registrations, but a great deal of permanent outreach-based contact with populations and the matching of numerous data sources.
	Housing is a long-standing concern of mine, and I welcome the new priority for house building that we have established in recent months. Mechanisms in the housing Bill will enable us to deliver the homes that are needed. I especially welcome the emphasis on social housing. As the sub-prime crisis across the Atlantic and its ripple effect have demonstrated, we have a genuine problem not just with those who cannot get a foot on the ladderimportant though that isbut with those cannot sustain home ownership. There are a growing number of such people, and sadly that number is likely to continue to grow. We must ensure that we not only provide homes for them, but do something critically important, by de-stigmatising affordable housing for rent.
	Home ownership is a legitimate aspiration. It is a lovely aspiration. It is an aspiration that I am sure almost every hon. Member has fulfilled. It is not, however, a moral right. It does not confer a higher status on home owners, and it does not imply that those who cannot afford to buy their own homes are in some way inferior and as a consequencefor this is the practical manifestationshould not have the rights to choice, mobility and decency that the rest of us take for granted.
	Of course the problem is partly due to a long-term failure to build new homes on the necessary scale, but it is also the result of the right to buy. That was a fantastic policy, and a windfall, for those who benefited from it directly, but it was a social catastrophe none the less. It left us in a position equivalent to running the bath taps with the plug out: building new homes while haemorrhaging social housing at the other end of the process. We must address that problem.
	Although building new social homes is crucial, it is not enough. I welcome the fact that the Government are also seeking to implement some of the recommendations of John Hills' review of social housing. He has this year produced what is probably the most rigorous and thorough analysis of the social housing sector in generations. He has put forward some excellent proposals, mostly based on incentives and rightly rejecting the call we have heard from some quarters for an end to permanent tenancies for social tenants. That would be another inhumane and brutal social catastrophe. The incentives address issues such as downsizing and mobility. He also looked at the issue of worklessness among social tenants. That is not a problem to do with housing benefit, as has been suggested from the Opposition Benches. It is a problem to do with rent: those who aspire to get into work at the lower end of the salary scale will be unable to clear their rent. If people are to be able to hold on to their homes, rather than be at risk of arrears and losing their homes, we must look more imaginatively at the relationship between the Department for Work and Pensions and the Department for Communities and Local Government in terms of the treatment of housing costs. It is criminal that families are trapped in poverty and worklessness because of the way in which rent and housing benefit currently interact.
	I will push hard for the housing legislation to include the long promised and long overdue updating of overcrowding measures. In my constituency, we have families not of six people in two-bed flats, but of six people in one-bed flats. It is time we recognised the inhumanity of that level of overcrowding. We need a modern legislative response to give such families the hope that they will achieve what they rightly aspire to.

Jamie Reed: I shall endeavour to use the time wisely, and I am grateful to the hon. Member for Broxbourne (Mr. Walker)
	The Queen's Speech charts a clear course of action for this Government and for our country. In an era of insincere political gimmicks and gesture politics of the worst kind, the Government's legislative programme sets out to tackle the major issues of our time in a methodical, measured and practical way. It contains a sober analysis of the issues that the country faces and sets out the policies to address them. For all its surety, there is a profoundly progressive and radical element to the Government's programme, which no amount of shrill criticism can drown out. Members of this House perform a great disservice to politics when they fail to engage with the arguments and the policies put before them for their consideration and instead attempt to mislead the public that black is white and white is black. This programme is remarkable, in part, precisely because it seeks to avoid that tired practice and because it tackles the issues of our day head on.
	Of course, it is the Opposition's job to oppose, to interrogate and to scrutinise these proposals, and I hope that they do so well. Perhaps, if the right spirit is adopted, they will seek to form a consensus with the Government on a series of issues for the benefit of the nation. That is a sincere hope. I will now identify a series of areas where such an approach is needed immediately.
	The first such area is the Climate Change Bill. The Government should be commended on being the first Government in the history of this nation and the world to bring forward such a far-reaching and ambitious Bill. There can be no doubt that it is truly radical. The fight against climate change is for my generation what the Cold War was for my parents' generation and what the fight against fascism was for my grandparents' generation.
	The nature of the problem means that this is not a simple matter of generational politics. As most of us know, but not all of us accept, it is the issue that most threatens our very existence, whatever our nationality, religion, race or class. No part of the political spectrum can claim sole ownership of this issue, but I firmly believe that the fight against climate change can be fought and won only with progressive policy solutions. The market will not rescue the planet from rising sea levels and burning woodlands. Climate change will affect the poorest first and it will affect them the worst. That is perhaps its only certainty, and it is why it demands a progressive response. It cannot be left to the market, because the market cannot solve the problems caused by climate change, nor can market mechanisms, of themselves, provide us with the means with which to fight climate change.
	The state, acting nationally and internationally, is the best and most effective tool that we have to combat climate change. The issue requires better government, not simply smaller government, so let us work together on both sides of this House to make the Bill work, bearing in mind that if we do not do so, my generation and every successive generation will believe that this House, and perhaps even democratic governance itself, is unable to solve the problems of most importance to the country and the planet. Let us consider the ramifications of that for not only the environment, but society, democracy and our entire way of life.
	Let us also consider something else when we debate the minutiae of this policy: this is a time for solutions, not gestures. It may be that our political culture and our political dynamics are simply not suited to achieving effective solutions to issues such as climate change. The adversarial nature of this House at present facilitates only the achievement of fleeting, partisan political advantage, and that is worthless. We all have the opportunity to change that: we have the opportunity to demonstrate that the Members of this House seek to serve the people of this country and to solve the problems that they face. That is the change that the British people require, and those are the changes that this legislative agenda demands of us in this House. The stakes have never been higher. The consequences of failure have never been greater. These issues are more important than any of our individual political fortunes.
	For the Climate Change Bill to work, it requires a series of complementary Bills, especially on planning and energy policy. Changes to the planning system of this country are long overdue and I am pleased that the Government have recognised that in the Queen's speech. The Climate Change Bill also requires a consensus. But the area where a consensus is most urgently required is energy policy, especially nuclear energy. Put simply, without new nuclear energy in Britain, we have no chance of leading the fight against climate change, strengthening our energy supplies and continuing our economic growth.
	Before entering the House, I worked in the nuclear industry and campaigned for new nuclear and for a better understanding of the industry in the media and across the political spectrum. I must say that, for the most part, I have found the understanding of nuclear issues in this House to be nothing short of patheticthat is the most charitable word I can find. Since entering the House, I have worked with the industry, the Government, utility companies and the trade unions to further the nuclear case. It has been a relentless endeavour, but logic, science, the imperatives of climate change and the overwhelming national interest would appear to have prevailed.
	I am pleased that the Prime Minister has shown the strength and courage necessary to take these difficult decisions. It would be easy for the Prime Minister to strike populist oppositional poses on nuclear, much as the Leader of the Opposition has done. But difficult decisions call for people of real strength and integrity: there is no room for cowardice or opportunism on such matters, and the Prime Minister has demonstrated that he is the only party leader prepared to take the tough political decisions this nation needs. On behalf of 17,000 workers in my constituency and more than 40,000 nuclear workers nationwide, I thank him for that.
	In the spirit of consensus, I want to change that. I want, and the market wants, a consensus on nuclear. The Liberal Democrats have an official viewthey are anti-nuclear. That position is, in my view, deeply flawed, but it is at least sincerely held. But I know that several Liberal Democrat MPsnone of whom is in the Chamber at presentare pro-nuclear, and I hope that they can find their voice and help to build the consensus that I seek.
	The official policy of the Conservatives is anti-nuclear, but I also know that the majority of Conservative MPs are pro-nuclear. I hope that those men and women find their voice soon and force a change in the views of the Leader of the Opposition and his Front Bench energy spokespeople so that we can achieve a consensus. The policy of nuclear energy as a last resort is perhaps the best illustration of the political malaise that the Queen's Speech seeks to leave behind. Indeed, it was cited as such by the hon. Member for Grantham and Stamford (Mr. Davies) when he left the Conservatives for Labour recently.
	The Conservative position deserves some exploration. The policy of nuclear as a last resort, if adopted, would ensure the demise of the British nuclear industry and with it, more than 100,000 British jobs, directly and indirectly. It would weaken our national scientific, engineering, academic and mechanical disciplines, impoverish our ability to strengthen the security of our energy supplies and undermine our efforts to combat climate change. Why? Because after decades of decline and having now won the arguments, the nuclear industry needs new entrants at every levelscientific, mechanical, professional, academic and industrial. Decades of neglect have resulted in a shrunken, ageing skills base. Unless the industry is supported now, there will be no industry to support in the future. To delay is to decideas I wrote in my letter to the Leader of the Opposition, calling on him to abandon his opposition to the industry earlier this year. I still await a reply.
	What informs the Conservatives' policy? It is based upon a tragic conflation of factors. First, the Leader of the Opposition is anti-nuclear and believes that the public are anti-nuclear. He is wrong in that assertion, but he believes that it is a populist position. Secondly, fearful of his colleagues who support the industry, he has not the courage to confront his Back Benchers with the reality of his policy. Thirdly, he hopes to shave votes from the Liberal Democrats in Tory-Lib Dem marginals in the south of England, having clearly abandoned the north of England, Scotland and Wales. Finally, he either fails to understand the need for nuclear in the fight against climate change, which in itself provides a shocking illustration of his understanding of the realities, or he does understand, but is willing to place his political fortunes above those of the future of this country and the planet. The change that this country needs is the change from cynical, cowardly, political calculations such as that. The Leader of the Opposition can help assist this change in one of two wayseither by admitting his policy is wrong and supporting the Government, or by taking a clear, principled anti-nuclear position and allowing his colleagues a free vote on the Government's plans.
	I am passionate about this matter, because it means everything to my constituents and to the very fabric of my constituency. For me, it is not a question of choosing one electricity generating source over another. The nuclear industry dominates my economy: indeed, it sustains 60 per cent. of it, including schools, hospitals, services in both the public and private sectors, the housing market and the transport infrastructure. There is not one area of west Cumbrian life that the nuclear industry does not touch, and that is why the Conservative proposals are so dangerous. They threaten not only the future of the British nuclear industry and all that depends on it, but west Cumbria's very existence.
	The future success of west Cumbria is facilitated by the Queen's Speech. That success is the only reason I am in this House. Nowhere else in this country or even the world is the symbiosis of economic, environmental and energy policies as evident as it is in west Cumbria.
	I could go on but, in fairness to other colleagues, I shall bring my remarks to a close. Politics matters, and on Sunday I shall join hundreds of others at Whitehaven's war memorial in reflecting on what happens when politics fails. Robert Kennedy said:
	Progress is a nice word. But change is its motivator. And change has its enemies.
	I appeal to hon. Members of all parties not to be the enemies of change.

Clive Efford: The Queen's Speech contains radical proposals on families, climate change, housing and local government. I want to focus on local government and the empowerment of local communities so it is fitting that I follow the hon. Member for Ruislip-Northwood (Mr. Hurd). I congratulate him on his success in bringing in the Sustainable Communities Act 2007 and on the prospect of its enactment.
	Many communities feel a sense of detachment, and in this place and elsewhere politicians have debated how we can get our local communities to re-engage with the democratic process. Part of the difficulty is that people can perceive the problems with their communitiesthey live with them every daybut there is a disconnection between the solutions and their enactment. When people express concern to us about local community issues, we as politicians need to engage them in the implementation of the solutions.
	As a Member who works with the local community to try to deal with some of the problems, I feel frustrated that I have no decision-making powers to will people the resources to carry out the changes they want. People in my community propose excellent projects that would make a huge difference, but those projects fall by the wayside because there are neither the resources nor the capacity, through statutory or other bodies, to support such schemes into fruition.
	If we are to engage with local communities, we need to bring about change in the way that local government and other local statutory bodies work. For that, we need flexibility so I welcome the consultation document produced by the Department for Communities and Local Governmentthe action plan for empowering local communitieswhich states that there will be a reduction in the number of targets set locally to allow local authorities more flexibility.
	Most of the Members who have spoken in the debate have a local government background, so we know that by the time a local authority receives its rate support grant and other funding 99 per cent. of the money has already been spent on all the statutory functions of local government, such as schools, social services or support for children in care. There is little flexibility in the budget to meet the challenging demands that will come from the empowerment of local communities.
	I urge the Government to consider targeting those powers so that it is not just the sharp-elbowed, well-educated communities that come first and get what they want, but the most deprived and challenged communities are helped to engage in improving the quality of life in their area. If the engagement and empowerment of local communities is to work, the process has to drill down to them, as my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government said. People are already engagedthey know what is wrong in their communitiesand we have to find mechanisms to encourage them and give them a supporting hand to take things to the next stage. Quite often other communities with the wherewithal jump to the front of the queue before the deprived communities get a chance. That is where we must make a difference.
	I welcome the measures on the empowerment of local councillors; I would have welcomed them when I was a local councillor. However, they might provide an opportunity for people to make trouble just to make a name for themselves. We must be careful to ensure that the councillors empowered to work up projects in their local communities are not just politically motivated and that they are genuinely of the community and for the community. For example, it is easy to organise a petition for speed humps in a road, to demand that the road humps are put in place and then to complain about the council if that is not done. I am sure that we have all been guilty of doing something similar in the past. However, is that community empowerment or is community empowerment about enabling the parents who are concerned about the lack of facilities for young people to come forward to say that something should be done about that? The latter is the real change that we need.
	I very much welcome the idea of transferring assets but not the idea of the well heeled, well-educated sections of the community coming forward to elbow their way to taking over the running of services in their area. Real changes must take place in the communities where the changes are most needed. However, there is a great deal of good will towards the idea of people coming forward to participate and we must provide the basics so that local people can be empowered to take over the running of local assets and services for themselves. The schemes must be sustainable.
	Neighbourhood renewal will come to an end at the end of March next year. I have chaired a local neighbourhood renewal project and, through talking to the local community and challenging the local authority to respond to the issues that have been put on the agenda by the local community and not by officers from the local authority, we have actually managed to implement some enormous changes. We now have an adult learning centre at a local school in which 1.5 million has been invested to make it fully accessible to the disabled. The school has been expanded further by introducing a children's centre. The seedcorn money for that came from decisions that were made at the local neighbourhood renewal panel and that money set everything in train. Ideas came from the local school with the support of the local community and the arguments were put forward at the neighbourhood renewal panel. Therefore, the decisions were made by local people. Similarly with neighbourhood wardens, and the initiative that we took with Charlton Athletic football club has brought youth work on to the estates. That has all come about as the result of community initiativespeople becoming involved, perceiving a problem and identifying what they would like to do to solve it.
	We need to find the resources to enable people to become involved. The key to change is having the resources and the local community having the power to take decisions about those resources without the decisions being made for it. Having the decisions taken elsewhere leads to disengagement. Instead, those who perceive the problem should be part of finding its solution.
	If we are to empower local communities, we should also empower the tenants to decide who should be their landlord. If we talk about empowering local communities, we are not consistent if we continue to deny local tenants the opportunity to remain council tenants if that is their wish. Any future arrangements for the financing of housing should include that option. Tenants should not be forced down the route of becoming an arm's length management organisation or any other body that is at arm's length from the local authority. However, if that happens and difficulties arise, the assumption should be that the housing returns to the control of the local authority and does not pass into the private sector or anywhere else.
	In the few minutes that I have left, I would like to discuss planning. Several Members have said that the crisis in housing has grown despite the Government's efforts over the past 10 years. In a report that was published in June, the Royal Town Planning Institute indicated that a start date was awaited for the building programmes for 225,000 homes on 14,000 acres of land, although planning permission for the homes had been given. I recently met the private company that has just taken on responsibility for developing the Kidbrooke area. We are going to knock down 1,900 homes on an estate and replace them with 4,400 homes, and we are about a third to half way through decanting the estate. The private company will submit a planning application in the new year to start the first phase of the development. When I asked how long the company would be on site from beginning to end, I was told that it would take 10 to 15 years to build 4,400 homes. It cannot be right that it will take that long to implement such a development.
	Given that the RTPI indicates that 225,000 homes are awaiting building start dates, we will have to set timetables for the implementation of planning applications because we will otherwise not meet the targets that we are setting ourselves. I am absolutely sick and tired of three generations of a family who live in the same home coming to see me in my surgery when I know that there is little that I can do to help them to find housing. The problem is that we are not building homes quickly enough. The planning permission is in place, but the development is happening.
	I welcome the Government's proposals for trying to streamline some of the processes involved in public inquiries. It might be fine strategically if they are going to set a national plan for three nuclear power stations and then leave the planning commission to sort that out. However, with regard to the Thames Gateway bridge, if it were said, We need a bridge in east London, and that was left to an inquiry, that would not be acceptable.

Colin Challen: In 2050, when a grateful nation reads the record of this historic debate, it will look in particular at the names of my hon. Friends the Members for Bedford (Patrick Hall) and for Southampton, Test (Dr. Whitehead), the hon. Members for Ruislip-Northwood (Mr. Hurd) and for Cambridge (David Howarth), and my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford (Mr. Kidney), who provided cross-party consensus on the Climate Change Bill. That consensus is built on a sane and rational approach, and it goes well beyond anything that we have experienced in party politics for a very long time. I, too, hope to contribute to that sane and rational approach in the remaining 10 minutes available to me.
	I welcome the Bill. It builds on the leadership that Tony Blair created at Gleneagles and with the commissioning of the Stern review. However, 10 kg of good hard work can be undone by 1 g of poor work. If we try to undermine the European Union's 20 per cent. renewables target by going for the smallest possible contributionperhaps 10 per cent. or lessthat will do considerable harm to our reputation. Many speakers this afternoon said that the target of 60 per cent. in the Bill should be increased. Indeed, the Prime Minister himself has said so. There is wide consensus now about a higher figure. The Stern review, the intergovernmental panel on climate change, the Exeter science conference and informed opinion around the world all suggest that our targets must be far higher.
	In a speech on Monday this week, the leading Democrat candidate for the White House said that she would negotiate mandatory targets and that that would include a cut of 80 per cent. in United States emissions by 2050. Has she not paid attention to our caution? She added that she wanted America to lead the global green revolution and said that such an ambitious target would help to create 5 million new jobs. She said:
	You have heard of white collar jobs and blue collar jobs...these will be green collar jobs.
	At last we have somebody heading for the White House who can put two and two together. But she also said:
	This
	that is, climate change
	is too important. We cannot afford to wait two more years.
	That, too, is very important. We in the United Kingdom cannot afford to wait two more years for the climate change committee to reconsider the target. There is a global consensus emerging on a far higher figure. The 60 per cent. figure looks dated. All the other Democrat candidates for the presidency agree with Hilary Clinton.
	Why must we delay, when Germany is forging ahead under Chancellor Angela Merkel? She called a Cabinet Konklave meeting in August to discuss a new integrated climate and energy programme. A target of 40 per cent. less CO2 by 2020 was setrather more ambitious than our own target, which is capped at 32 per cent. I fear that when we set a lower target, that is the de facto target on which we will set our sights.
	Germany's existing climate and energy policies are already delivering economic growth250,000 new jobs are one sign of that. Yet we have renewable energy resources that are generally reckoned to be 50 per cent. better than Germany's. Our ambitions, our energy resources, our technological capacity could be brought to bear to make us the world's leading green economy. Despite some successes, we are in the main too indecisive, and industry sources point out that by 2011 Germany will have 32,000 MW of wind capacity, whereas we will have just one third of that. That is not good enough.
	The Climate Change Bill must be an urgent catalyst for change, and for that to happen it needs to be amended. That is not to say that a precise figure can today be inserted to replace 60 per cent. Rather, as the Joint Committee on the draft Bill and the Environmental Audit Committee recommended, the Government should publish their rationale for settling on any figure. As the former Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the present Foreign Secretary, told the Environmental Audit Committee,
	you cannot pluck a figure out of thin air.
	The irony is that the Government have not plucked a figure out of thin air, but are nevertheless refusing to acknowledge the rationale for their choice. They refuse to acknowledge that the original Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution report published in 2000, which first came up with 60 per cent., did so on the basis of the contraction and convergence framework devised by the Global Commons Institute. I sometimes tire of pointing that out to people. I am beginning to sound like a cracked record, but for some reason the Government are embarrassed by that piece of history and have answered my queries and parliamentary questions with unnecessarily evasive answers, almost as if contraction and convergence was some kind of shameful state secret and if it ever got out, the ravens in the Tower of London would fly off and never return.
	What appears to be the case, and why the two-year delay has come into play is that our potential support for contraction and convergenceI recognise that there is potential support for that framework or any othermust be camouflaged until we get to the United Nations COP talks in Copenhagen in 2009. That fits in with the Tyndall centre's characterisation of the previous COP talks in Nairobi as being like a race to be second, owing to the fear felt by delegations that being bold about anything might leave them up the negotiating creek without a paddle. We must build a consensus and ensure that others come with us. Many nations now support contraction and convergence; indeed, some are looking to us to lead on that.
	How does our reluctance to talk about that square with our boast of being the first country with a Climate Change Bill, which seems a bit of a contradiction when we know that any such Bill has to be global? We cannot just rely on a scientist to tell us what the target has to be; we must discuss how the political responsibility for achieving it should be distributed. The fact that we will have had a Climate Change Act on the statute book for nearly two years come 2009 will be important. We will no doubt urge others to follow in our footsteps. If we do, however, we will have to share with them our wisdom, and I am afraid that that means laying our cards on the table. I strongly urge the Government to take the next obvious step, one year on from Stern, and bring together a national climate change framework convention here in the UK, which will help to formulate our position in the international arena. If the independent climate change committee is to work out the new target, it needs not only to consider the science, but to figure out how to distribute the responsibility that I have mentioned. That task should not be left to a handful of people, no matter how qualified they may be to do it.
	In considering the significance of the committee and its duty to report to Parliament, I firmly believe that Parliament should play a role in its appointment. That would best be achieved by submitting nominees' names to a Select Committee for scrutiny. I suggest that the Environmental Audit Committee is best suited for that purpose, given its cross-departmental brief and intense focus on climate change. Incorporating that step into the procedure would give the new independent committee a real boost to its credibility and mean that nobody, including the Opposition, could say later that it was stuffed full of Government poodles.
	Finally, I would like to suggest another small amendment to the Bill, concerning its title. It occurred to me only last night that Climate Change Bill sounds rather neutral. Let us call it the Climate Change Survival Bill. Let us clarify what we intend to do with the Bill. That would also help us to focus on the reality of climate change, which might even help us to close the gap between that reality and the political quagmire in which we all too often find ourselves.
	In my remaining three minutes I would like briefly to discuss the energy BillI will finish in time to allow my hon. Friend the Member for Brighton, Kemptown (Dr. Turner) his 10 minutes. I have referred to the EU renewables target. The Bill will be discussed at a time when the price of oil is likely to exceed $100 a barrel. That is well beyond any of the assumptions made by the Government when considering transport infrastructure, for example. When the chair of Shell spoke about the reasons for the price level yesterday, he said that it was nothing to do with the level of reserves and more to do with the reduced buffers between supply and demand. They have fallen sharply and look set to remain low. Demand is shooting up, leaving world economies at the mercy of the markets. We will face a severe test at a time when developed economies are already feeling the strain from other developments, such as the great credit crunch.
	Sweden has already declared its ambition to minimise its use of oil. We should follow suit, although for us that might be rather more difficult, albeit not impossible. As the Centre for Alternative Technology has proposed, there are technologies which could help to make the UK carbon-free by 2027. If we followed that route, our susceptibility to problems with both high energy costs and supply would come to an end. There are many good reasons why we should embrace the new alternative technologies and leave fossil fuels, many having nothing at all to do with climate change.
	The Government have acknowledged that building new nuclear power stations will contribute nothing to meeting our energy needs until 2020 at the earliest. That means that new nuclear will contribute nothing to our share of the EU carbon reduction target by 2020, nor will carbon capture and storage be able to do much either. We are still at an early stage in research and development and many imponderables remain to be resolved. Thus, although the Bill paves the way for those things, they cannot do anything for us in the short to medium term. As we have seen, we cannot afford to rely on fossil fuels, which will become too expensive. We are therefore bound to boost our reliance on renewables.
	To conclude, I am not despondent, but despairing of the news that the Government seek to make the minimum contribution to the 20 per cent. average renewables target. It could even be less than 10 per cent. if the proposal for trading in renewable allowances of some description were to be permitted. I understand that the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform is arguing for that in Brussels, and I hope that we can scotch the idea straight away, because it would also damage German feed-in tariff payments and skew the market. That might make our renewables obligation certificate system look rather better, and if I had had more time, I should have liked to speak about how we should pursue the feed-in tariff system. However, I shall now hand over to my estimable colleague from Brighton.

Peter Ainsworth: This seems to have been a very long debateand when I look at the clock I realise that that it has indeed been a very long debate. It seems a long time ago that the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government stood up to make what I thought a sadly partisan speech; it was as though she was still addressing the Labour party conference, and had not yet found her way into her new role and learnt what it takes to be a Secretary of State.
	It also seems a long time ago that my hon. Friend the Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Mr. Pickles) made his witty, trenchant and very well-informed contribution. Only under questioning and pressure from Labour Members did he feel it necessary to expose the hypocrisy and incompetence that lie behind the Government's plans for housing, and the lack of democratic accountability in their proposals to reform the planning systemissues about which my hon. Friends the Members for Fareham (Mr. Hoban) and for Broxbourne (Mr. Walker) both spoke with a great deal of local knowledge and considerable authority.
	We heard a wonderful contribution from the hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mrs. Dunwoody). I will check  Hansard tomorrow, but I think she said that in future her constituency would be a sparkling and happy place. It is lovely to see her lighting up her place at the end of the Bench with such happy regularity.
	In a powerful speech, my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Mr. Leigh) spoke, also from experience, of the problems and pressures faced by his local authorities and police as a result of various factors. My hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mr. Field) made a thoughtful and well-informed speech about immigration. I know it is invidious to keep singling people out, but I thought that the hon. Member for Eltham (Clive Efford)despite having been slapped down in the most brutal way when he intervened on my hon. Friend the Member for Bexleyheath and Crayford (Mr. Evennett)made a particularly thoughtful speech about the empowerment of local communities, an agenda that the Conservatives strongly support.
	No fewer than 12 hon. Members devoted most of their comments to the Climate Change Bill, and we heard some extremely useful contributions. The hon. Member for Copeland (Mr. Reed), who is not in the Chamber now, struck a slightly different note in focusing on nuclear power, which raised a number of eyebrows among his hon. Friends. In the process, he also managed to misrepresent the views of Her Majesty's Opposition on the subject. No doubt we shall have a full and through discussion of the issue when we debate the energy Bill.
	I assume that we shall have a Second Reading debate on the Climate Change Bill at some point in the not too distant future, but perhaps the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs will let us know whether he intends the Bill to be introduced in another place. A rumour is circulating to that effect. As there may be further time for us to debate climate change issues before Second Reading, I do not intend to devote a great deal of time to the content of the Bill, save to say that we strongly welcome it. As we campaigned for it, it would have been rather churlish of us not to welcome it now that the Government have introduced it.
	As Members in all parts of the House have pointed out, there are issues in the Bill which will need to be resolved. There are also areas that will need to be tightened up, and we think we can secure cross-party consensus on that. Above all, all decisions relating to climate change must be based securely on the best science available at the time.
	Like my hon. Friend the Member for Brentwood and Ongar, I must ask the Secretary of State to introduce the marine Bill at the earliest possible opportunity. It is a great disappointment that it is still lurking in the small print as a draft when it should be out in the open, heading towards the statute book. We look forward to that happening, and to debating it and making constructive contributions when we are afforded the opportunity to do so.
	This debate gives us a chance both to look forward to the Government's programme and to look back a bit and review the performance of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs over the past year. I have said before that the Secretary of State is a very decent manhe is widely recognised as suchbut the Department he took over not so long ago is far from decent; indeed, it is not fit for purpose, to borrow a phrase Labour Members might recognise. It is also a Department where events happen: foot and mouth disease, bluetongue, avian influenza and floods. I gather via a message from the Secretary of State this afternoon that there are currently severe flood risks in the East Anglia region, and the Environment Agency is warning of flood surges. If the Secretary of State has any update on that, I am sure that the House would be delighted to be kept informed.
	The problem with the Secretary of State's position is that DEFRA is a failing Department. It matters when Government Departments fail, because their failure impacts on individuals, communities and businesses. However, when a Department with DEFRA's responsibilities is failing, that also has profound implications for the environment, biodiversity and the natural world.
	The other problem with that failure is that the Department then finds it hard to carry clout in policy areas outside its immediate remit but over which it is notionally meant to have influence or responsibility. I do not want to labour the point about foot and mouth disease, but let us take a quick look at what happened over the past year. If anyone thinks that, just because the media have moved on a bit from the issues around Pirbright and the release of foot and mouth virus from a Government-licensed laboratory, the issue is done and dusted, they are sadly mistaken. The pain and economic hardship and the sense of betrayal are still very much alive, not only in the immediate Surrey and Berkshire areas, but across the country. Although we welcome the fact that this time, unlike what happened in 2001, the Department acted relatively quickly to contain the disease, basic competence after an event of that kind is not commonly a cause for general rejoicing.
	We welcome the recent easing of movement restrictions and the promise of the resumption of exports, but the latest export arrangements, which were announced yesterday, have been greeted with considerable concern in the south-east. It is unfortunate, as I think the Secretary of State would acknowledge, that the announcement of those changes was made by press release rather than by written statements to this House. I am sure he will reflect on that, and on his promise to keep the House fully informed of all changes as they occur.
	What really irks people, however, is that nobody seems willing to take responsibility for the leak of foot and mouth virus from a Government-regulated laboratory. That reinforces the opinion that this Government are all too quick to blame and punish others for errors and omissions, but are never willing to take responsibility for their own mistakes. The fact is that if DEFRA had been a farm or a food business, it would have been closed down.
	The foot and mouth issue is symptomatic of a wider problem faced by the Secretary of State in his new job. Nobody trusts his Department any longer. In the year since the last Gracious Speech, rural businesses have suffered continuing difficulties as a result of the ongoing shambles at the Rural Payments Agency. In March the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee published a report on the way in which the single farm payment system had been implemented. It described it variously as
	A catastrophe for farmers...A serious and embarrassing failure for DEFRA...A reputational disaster for DEFRA
	and
	evidence that the Government does not seem to be learning the lessons of previous failures.
	On top of the financial losses to farmers, totalling some 225 million, the taxpayer has had to foot the bill for cost overruns of 50 million and is faced with the prospect of EU fines amounting to 348 million. You can see, Mr. Deputy Speaker, why I suggest that DEFRA is a failing Department. As I said, if it were a business it would have been closed down.
	Then there is bovine tuberculosis. There have been endless consultations over many years, and still we have not seen any action. Perhaps it is a recognition of the Department's inability to run things properly that it spends so much money employing other people to do things instead. I suppose that we should welcome the fact that at least one sector of the business community is doing very well indeed out of DEFRA: the Department has managed to spend 1.1 billion on consultants in the last five years. Last year alone, it spent 290 million. It is probably worth observing that that is 23 times more than it has offered in compensation to farmers for its own release of foot and mouth into the environment. So while people in rural communities have been struggling with mounting levels of bureaucracy, the consequences of the Government's incompetence, declining services, closing post offices and the rest of it, DEFRA has been making consultants very rich indeed.
	DEFRA has overall responsibility for the Government's efforts to tackle climate change, and we look forward to debating the Climate Change Bill, but it already has an Office of Climate Change, which was set up in September 2006. A DEFRA news release stated:
	Office of Climate Change starts work. The Office of Climate Change...will work across Government to provide a shared resource for analysis and development of climate change policy and strategy.
	The Secretary of State's predecessor is quoted as saying:
	The Office will co-ordinate climate change activity across Government based on sound, objective analysis and drive forward progress on climate change policy and strategy.
	Can the Secretary of State tell us whether the OCC has co-ordinated with the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform over the efforts that its Secretary of State has been making to undermine the Government's stated support for the EU initiative to generate 20 per cent. of energy from renewable sources by 2020the point admirably raised by the hon. Member for Morley and Rothwell (Colin Challen)? Was the OCC co-ordinating with DBERR over the total shambles that has overtaken the system of grant support for micro-power installations? That shambles has resulted in a collapse in the number of grant applications in the past year.
	Has the OCC been co-ordinating with the Department for Communities and Local Government over its attempts to weaken the Merton rulean admirable local initiative that requires all new developments over a certain size to source at least 10 per cent. of their energy from renewable supplies? Some 140 councils have been following the Merton example. Only last June, the Minister for Housing, whom I see is no longer present, was enthusiastic and waxed lyrical about it. She said that was essential that all authorities should follow the example of Merton. However, after lobbying by the ever-unambitious house-building sector, whose instinct is always to rush straight to the lowest common denominator, the latest draft climate change planning policy statement discourages councils from making the Merton rule a requirement at all.
	Has the OCC been co-ordinating with the Department for Transport over the terms of the renewable transport fuel obligation? We are all in favour of sustainable biofuels, but the absence of any sustainable criteria attached to that new obligation is a recipe for disaster. Of course, the market will go straight to the cheapest source, which is likely to be imports, grown at the expense of the rain forest. To say that that is counter-productive is a serious understatement.
	Has the OCC been co-ordinating and liaising with the Department for Transport over proposed changes to the planning system specifically designed to make it easier to build airports and expand airport capacity, at a time when aviation emissions are the fastest growing source of climate change gases?
	Has the OCC been co-ordinating with the Treasury over the management of the 20 million allocated in last year's Budget to
	help local authorities and others work in partnership with energy companies to promote and incentivise energy efficiency measures to households?
	If it has, it has not had much influence. The budget has been allocated elsewhere and has now been cut because of financial difficulties at DEFRA, with which we are sadly all too familiar.
	The Prime Minister says that he is all about change, but this Government programme simply gives us more of the same. It provides more top-down, bossy Government, more quangos and more central plans that will not work. He has brought a change in one respect, but it is not for the better. Whereas his predecessor at least got fired up by the threat of climate change, people are increasingly saying that the present Prime Minister just does not get it. Whether the Climate Change Bill will emerge as a true catalyst for change remains to be seen. We hope that it will.
	DEFRA seems no longer to be trusted by other Departments, and seems to have long ago lost the trust of the people whom it is there to serve. Restoring that trust is the biggest challenge that we face, and the biggest change that is neededand in order to do that, we need to change the Government.

Hilary Benn: With your permission, Mr. Deputy Speaker, I shall begin by making the House aware of potentially serious flooding in coastal areas of eastern England in the next 48 days. A tidal surge of up to 3 m is making its way down the North sea and could coincide with peak high tides. There is a risk of flood defences being overtopped on the coast and in tidal rivers, especially in East Anglia, particularly on the Norfolk broads and the coast south of Great Yarmouth, including Lowestoft, and areas south of that as far as the coast of Kent. In the area as a whole, six severe flood warnings, five flood warnings and 15 flood watches are in place. Several flood warnings and flood watches are also in place in Yorkshire.
	Police incident commands have been set up in the areas most likely to be affected, especially Norfolk and Suffolk, to co-ordinate the emergency response to any flooding, including evacuation if that is necessary. They are advising residents about the situation as it develops and will continue to do so, and they will co-ordinate the emergency response, including the deployment of the fire and rescue services if required. The Environment Agency will close the Thames barrier if that is needed. We are keeping a close watch on the situation, and I shall keep the House informed of any significant developments.
	Although the right hon. Member for North Antrim (Rev. Ian Paisley) is not in his place, may I say that I am sure that the whole House will wish to express its profound concern at the news of the shooting of a police officer in Northern Ireland today, and to send its condolences to the family of the young man who died as a result of drugs?
	One of the glories, if I may use that word, of the Gracious Speech debates is the wide range of contributions. I fear that I may not be able to do justice to all those that we have heard todayI counted 27 in all, so this is the 28thbut I shall do my best. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government spoke eloquently about the contrast, not least in her constituency, between how life was in the 1980s and 1990s for many of our constituents and how it is today because of the practical politics of this Government, which this Gracious Speech demonstrates once again.
	That change was echoed in contributions from, among others, my hon. Friends the Members for Crewe and Nantwich (Mrs. Dunwoody), for Sheffield, Attercliffe (Mr. Betts) and for Regent's Park and Kensington, North (Ms Buck), and my right hon. Friend the Member for North-West Durham (Hilary Armstrong). I know that she had a long-standing charity event in her constituency to attend, and she offered her apologies for not being here for the close of the debate. She made a passionate speech, in which she reminded us of why she was on the Front Bench for 18 years, when she urged us to find ways of raising aspiration, increasing self-respect and trying to tackle child poverty.
	The hon. Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Mr. Pickles) made an entertaining, if not altogether illuminating, speech. It was entertaining because I learnt of his Independent Labour party ancestrymy respect for him is even higher than beforeand heard about Nikita Khrushchev, tractors and Soviet agriculture. All that was missing was a reference to Gosplanbut no doubt that will come in time.
	However, the hon. Gentleman's speech was not very illuminating, because it was not clear what he was in favour of. He raised the issue of wasteas did my hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Test (Dr. Whitehead)but there was a contradiction in the hon. Gentleman's argument. On the one hand, he alleged that the Government's policy was to go around telling local authorities what to do. As my hon. Friend made clear, although we have quadrupled recycling in the past 10 years or so, we need to go a lot further. Local authorities approached us and asked for a power to run incentive schemes. We consulted and 78 local authorities responded in favour, with nine against. Precisely because there are debates about how to make such schemes workthe hon. Gentleman mentioned the issues of fly-tipping and large familiesand various schemes are in use in the rest of Europe, the sensible thing to do is to run some pilot schemes, and that is what we propose.
	The hon. Member for East Surrey (Mr. Ainsworth) did not dwell much on the proposals in the Gracious Speech. He rightly went over the previous debate that we had on foot and mouth. On the Rural Payments Agency, he knows that we are in the process of sorting out the difficulties, and I express regret again to the House for the problems that those have created for farmers. However, a Department that is capable of producing the Climate Change Bill, which has been so widely welcomed as a framework, can hardly or fairly be described as a failing Department.
	We have heard many thoughtful speeches, especially from my hon. Friends the Members for Copeland (Mr. Reed), for High Peak (Tom Levitt) and for Eltham (Clive Efford) and from the hon. Members for Broxbourne (Mr. Walker), for Hazel Grove (Andrew Stunell) and for Ruislip-Northwood (Mr. Hurd). Several themes have emerged in the debate, including the question of how we deal with the competing pressure on our land and how we ensure that all local voices are heard. My hon. Friend the Member for Eltham made that point very forcefully.
	The second theme was the impact of demographic change, migration and immigration on rural areasthe issue raised by the hon. Member for Gainsborough (Mr. Leigh)and on our towns and cities, a point made by the hon. Members for Brent, East (Sarah Teather), for Fareham (Mr. Hoban) and for Cities of London and Westminster (Mr. Field). I thought that the hon. Lady made a good point when she drew attention, in an intervention, to the contribution that those who have made this country their home make to our economic life. If I reflect on my constituency, where that is certainly the case, if all the people who had come to Britain in the past 30 years decided not to come to work tomorrow morning, many a lecture would go undelivered at the two universities, many a bus would not run, operations would be cancelled, people would not be cared for and business would, in part, come to a halt. It is also true, however, that sometimes people find it difficult to deal with the pace of change. We should not be afraid to debate that point, or other aspects of our more interdependent and rapidly changing world.
	Many hon. Members raised the issue of housing, including my hon. Friends the Members for Great Grimsby (Mr. Mitchell), for Sheffield, Attercliffe and for Eltham. My hon. Friend the Member for Eltham paid tribute to my right hon. Friend the Minister for Housing for the work that she is doing. I have seen a change in demand for housing in my constituency in the eight and a half years that I have had the privilege of being its Member of Parliament. When I arrived, good social housing, in the form of bricks and mortar, was still being demolished in parts of the constituency, not because there was anything wrong with itif it had been picked up and put down in one of the constituencies represented by some hon. Members present, it would have increased in value 10, 20 or 30-foldbut because it was in areas where nobody wanted to live. Those areas are now experiencing increased demand for housing. Somehow we have to bring together the reservations that communities sometimes havewhich have been reflected in speeches todayabout applications to build more houses, and the concerns that many families have about how their children will be able to afford to buy or rent somewhere to live. We have to connect those two issues better. One very good way to do that is to provide more housing.
	I turn now to the marine Bill, which was mentioned by the hon. Members for Cheltenham (Martin Horwood) and for Hazel Grove, as well as by my hon. Friend the Member for Brighton, Kemptown (Dr. Turner) and, a moment ago, by the hon. Member for East Surrey. I welcome their support, and reassure the House that the Government remain firmly committed to the Bill. We are in the process of drafting it, after consulting on its shape, and aim to publish the draft in the new year. I look forward to the comments when that draft appears. We need to provide for our seas, and the wonders that lie beneath them, the sort of protection that we have provided for our land over the years, as the seas are just as subject to competing pressures on their use.
	I am very pleased by the welcome expressed on all sides of the House for the Climate Change Bill. It was referred to by my hon. Friends the Members for Bedford (Patrick Hall), for Southampton, Test, for Morley and Rothwell (Colin Challen) and for Brighton, Kemptown, as well as by the hon. Members for Bexleyheath and Crayford (Mr. Evennett) and for Cambridge (David Howarth). I hope that Members who have looked at the Command Paper will accept that the Government have listened. I am grateful for all the comments, observations, recommendations and advice that we have received, including from the three Committees that have examined the Bill. All that will make a good Bill better.
	As for the 60 per cent. target for emissions reduction, the truth is that the science is changing. That is why my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister announced in September that we would ask the climate change committee to review the target. It seems to me that that is entirely the right approach, as we have heard various different figures even during this afternoon's debate. If the target is to be tougher than 60 per cent., there needs to be a mechanism to determine what it should be. I can tell the hon. Member for Cambridge that giving that responsibility to the climate change committee demonstrates that the Government are willing to trust another organisation. Whatever the Committee has to say will have a very powerful impact on our debates.
	On annual targets, I am willing to take the risk of being heckled and say that the argument against them has been won. My problem with milestones is that they sound a bit like targets by another name. In any event, all emissions in the five-year period count, and, as hon. Members will have seen from the Command Paper, there will be annual reporting of emissions. Moreover, the climate change committee will report on progress and the Government will have to respond. Both report and response will be laid before Parliament.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Stafford (Mr. Kidney) asked about smart metering. We are very keen on that, and the more quickly it can come in, the better. The hon. Member for Angus (Mr. Weir) asked whether reductions in one part of the UK that exceed the target count towards the total, and I can tell him that they do. All contributions from all sources in all parts of the country are gratefully received.
	As for international aviation, I can tell the House that we are trying to bring it into the EU emissions trading scheme. That is the sensible place to start, and the Command Paper makes it clear that, once we have succeeded in that respect, the climate change committee will be asked to look at the methodology involved in including aviation emissions in the UK targets. It will also be asked to look at what the impact would be.
	As many hon. Members have pointed out, the Climate Change Bill is a framework. It is radical and groundbreaking, and one of the non-governmental organisation representatives at the launch of the Command Paper described it as historic, but we need the appropriate mechanisms to make sure that what it proposes happens. That is why we put in place the climate change levysomething that, I am sorry to say, the main Opposition party did not supportand why the Bill will make a commitment to reducing carbon emissions. It is why there will be zero-carbon homes, an energy efficiency committee and an increase in vehicle excise duty, and it is also why planning permission for the London array will be sought and a feasibility study for the Severn barrage carried out.
	The Government remain absolutely committed to doing more on renewables, and to the target that we signed up to, but the truth is that Britain accounts for only 2 per cent. of the world's emissions. We must persuade other countries to play their part. Some countries have not yet accepted that they have any sort of part to play, let alone that they must cut emissions by 60 or 80 per cent., yet all of us in the Chamber know that we will not be able to deal with the problem of climate change unless all countriesincluding developing countries as they developplay their part. Meanwhile, the climate is changing in a way that impacts on the poorest people in the world already. My hon. Friend the Member for High Peak was right to refer to the campaign to make poverty history. Now we need a campaign to make climate change history, too.
	The debate has shown that the Government's job is to listen as well as to lead. That is true whether we are acting on climate change, regenerating local communities, or trying to make sure that people have decent homes to live in or that we take the right decisions about how we deal with the pressures on our precious and beautiful land. The measures put forward in the Gracious Speech show that the Government have listened, and that we will continue to lead.
	Debate adjourned. [Mr. Watson.]
	 Debate to be resumed on Monday 12 November.

David Winnick: I obviously accept that a recess, long or short, is not meant to be a holiday, although the word recess, as I am sure my hon. Friend the Deputy Leader of the House of Commons knows, is not a word that one hears much outside Westminster. Members of Parliament undertake constituency work during the break, especially during the summer. That is not in doubt. I am sure that my hon. Friend does; I do, and virtually all if not all hon. Members' offices are kept open, be it in the House of Commons or in the constituency. Correspondence continues to flow back and forth, and surgeries for most of us continue to take place in August and September as in any other month of the year.
	Nevertheless, that does not alter the fact that our main function of holding the Government to account in this Chamber does not take place for some 11 consecutive weeks. There are no oral questions, no statements and no debates. They cannot happen during the period when we are not sitting. Select Committees can meet, but I believe that I am right in saying that few do. If meetings of Select Committees occur, it is clearly not on the same basis as when the House is sitting. Written questions can be tabled. My hon. Friend looked puzzled when I mentioned Select Committees, but I believe that few sit when the House is not sitting. How many meet during the summer recess no doubt my hon. Friend can tell me. The fact that written questions can be tabled on certain dates is welcome. It is one advance on what occurred previously, but it is not a substitute for parliamentary activities.
	I do not dispute that a summer break should be longer than the other ones. That will come as a relief to some hon. Members who may feel that I am advocating just a two-week breaknothing of the kindbut is 11 weeks really necessary? This year we broke up on 26 July and came back on 8 October. Next year's dates are 23 July to 6 October.
	I welcomed the recommendation of the Modernisation Committee. The Committee reported in 2002:
	Parliament could be more effective if it is was not absent for such a long continuous period
	namely, from July to October. The Committee made the point that the arrangements that have continued over the years and which we are now back to meant that there was no parliamentary scrutiny and no opportunity for Members of Parliament to debate the issues of the moment. That is obvious, unless the House is recalled. I have been a Member for many years and I remember the House being recalled a few times, with every justification, but of course recalls are the exception. We were recalled for reasons such as the invasion of Kuwait, and the invasion of the Falklands long before that. They were not happy reasons.
	As we know, the House agreed in October 2002 to accept the recommendation to sit in part of September. It was carried by a large majority. The two Front-Bench teams were in favour. There was no great dissent, and the House accepted the recommendation of the Modernisation Committee. The result was that we sat for two weeks in September in 2003 and the following year. For the life of me I can see no reason why that situation should not continue.
	I do not remember Members complaining that they could not do their constituency work, which is the usual reason for not being in this place, or that the change was inconvenient. It was accepted that we had an opportunity to do the work for which we were electedholding the Government to account in debates and oral questions. Once again, we do not do that for an 11-week period.
	Perhaps fortunately for Members who were not keen on September sittings, the security screen was erected in 2005. I do not dispute the need for it, but that was the reason we did not sit in September that year. My hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland, South (Mr. Mullin) asked whether the situation would be permanent and whether we would no longer sit in September. He received a rather ambiguous reply, and the fact remains that since then there have been no September sittings and there is not the slightest indication that the Government and Opposition Front Benchers have any intention of reinstating them.
	My amendment that we should sit in September was defeated, but Members on the Government and Opposition Benches were in favour of the Modernisation Committee's recommendation in 2002, which was carried by a large majority. I do not want to be insulting so I hesitate to say this, but it is almost as though there has been a stitch-up between the Government and Opposition Front Benchers. At business questions, the shadow Leader of the House does not complain about not sitting in September and the Government are clearly not keen to do so. It could be cynically said that no Government are enthusiastic for Members of Parliament to sit for longerperhaps I should share that view if I had a senior Government positionbut neither the Government nor the Opposition seem keen to return to sittings in the late summer or early autumn.
	When Robin Cook was Leader of the House and proposed the Modernisation Committee recommendation, he made the point that the recess period would not be any shorter, so the September sittings did not mean that the House met more frequently. We broke up earlier in July to accommodate the arrangements for September sittings in 2003 and 2004, but . I differ from Robin Cook because I am in favour of a shorter summer recess. If I had to choose, however, between what happened in 2003 and 2004 and what has happened since, I should choose the formerobviously. If we must have a long recess, we should at least sit for some time during September.

David Winnick: The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right and he anticipates a point that I was about to make.
	Apart from the construction of the security screen in 2005, various reasons, or excuses, are given for our not meeting; for example, the party conferences. Nothing is set in concrete, however. If the leadership of the main parties represented in the House of Commons wanted different arrangements, I am sure that the party conferences could meet at different times. It is not holy writ that the Liberals, then my party and then the Conservatives should meet for their conference at the time they do. The dates can be changed. The argument about the party conferences is a weak one.
	It is also argued that building work must be done. Of course, there is bound to be maintenance work in a building such as this. However, would I not be right in saying that maintenance work is carried out in many large buildings around the country? There is nothing exceptional about the House of Commons. In other places where maintenance work takes place, it is very unlikely for the employees to be told to go away for 11 weeks on paid leave. Work carries on despite the fact that the builders are in. The same would apply here.
	I want to make it clear that I am not arguing for a recess of, say, two weeks. I suggest a recess of six or seven weeks, or eight maximum. At least that would be shorter than the current summer recess. That would allow us time for holidaysI certainly take a holidayand to do the constituency work that it is perhaps more difficult to do at other times of the year. I would say that I am being reasonable.
	The hon. Member for Kettering (Mr. Hollobone) made a very valid point. The public's perception is that we take 11-weeks' holiday. I suppose that if they come to our surgeries or receive acknowledgments or replies to letters, common sense dictates that it is unlikely that we are on holiday. Moreover, I suspect that all but one or two Members would find 11 weeks on the beach or anywhere else rather boring. My main argument is based around the fact that we are not carrying out the functions that we were elected to do in the first place. I have gone into that, but I also believe that we do ourselves a disservice, given the impression that the public have.

Helen Goodman: I understand the point that my hon. Friend makes about Select Committees.
	One of the issues that my hon. Friend raisedindeed, it was raised by the hon. Member for Kettering (Mr. Hollobone) and by my hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland, South (Mr. Mullin)concerned the fact that the public do not understand the word recess. We should therefore give a clearer exposition of what happens in the recess. The question of how best to fulfil the role of Member of Parliament has almost as many interpretations as there are MPs. There are many aspects to that role, includingand I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Walsall, North that it is very significantholding the Government to account; legislating; and, if one is a Government Member, supporting the Government in getting their programme through and delivering their manifesto commitments. Opposition Members should, quite rightly, oppose Government proposals and, moreover, encourage political debate on those matters.
	All of that is rooted in our role as representatives of our constituencies. Of course, I have not been a Member of Parliament as long as my hon. Friend, but it is useful to have a good, solid period of time that one can devote in a concentrated manner to the constituencynot dipping in and outso that one can follow things through without being pulled back to Westminster to deal with issues in the House. He knows as well as I that if we simply had a recess that coincided with the holidays, whether the July holidays in the case of the Scots or the August holidays in the case of the English, we would have the problem of not being able to meet all the people and listen to their concerns, and we would not be able to visit organisations across our constituencies. The time to do that properly and to think about what our constituents tell us is important in enabling us, when we do come back, to fulfil our other roles to the best of our ability.
	 Question put and agreed to.
	 Adjourned accordingly at twenty-seven minutes past Six o'clock.